Do you currently run or plan to run events that need to accept registrations, such as seminars, training courses, non-profit fund raisers, corporate functions, or even a big event like a dance party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Managing event registrations is a time-consuming process. You will most likely have to co-ordinate event schedules, available dates and seating, participant numbers, data collection and admin, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to attendees.
There are many benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce costs, help you easily replicate previously-run events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based website, you can download and install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Manager & Registration Software For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily create an event and start accepting bookings in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use several event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups 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.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older EE 3, as the software has been redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of using this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations and sign-ups manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating event participants to enrol themselves.
Allowing your attendees to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more of your time on organizing a more unique event.
Complete 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 attendees to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where Event Espresso users buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy optional addons only when you need extra functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event registrations any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social add ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite other people they know who may be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process is completed wholly online, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks related to administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the data collected from event participants.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to its users through built-in features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to web site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in very little time.
- Customized Event Registration Form. With Event Espresso you can collect specific data using custom event registration forms on your web site to plan a tailored experience for your customers.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. Customize your events and bookings page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and components, and HTML and/or CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospects so they can choose the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows event managers to configure the display of Google Maps on your event listing and event details sections.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly and easily by pre-configuring system-default ticket prices.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 includes 3 built-in in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of event participants and check-in everyone who has attended.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Be selective about who can register for your events.
- Private Contact Commenting. Record notes about users on their profile. Private commenting enables you to keep a record of when users contacted you, your internal comments, and how you’ve helped your customers.
- Keyword-Rich Event Page Web Links. Keyword rich Web links leverage your WP Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly permalinks with topic-relevant keywords enhance the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you get a more targeted audience to your website.
- Multi-Language Plugin. Event Espresso is being translated into more than 15 languages, and more are being added all the time.
- Import Events. EE 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that lets you import bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and upload information about events, datetimes, tickets, prices, registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Venue Profiles. The venue manager in EE 4 lets information about venues to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your site to inform attendees of your event’s location. The venue profile has many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays details such as venue seating capacity, venue site URL, venue phone number, physical and/or virtual location, location map, etc. You can also display venues throughout different areas on your theme as well as on a venue listing page on your site 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 registrant’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their data organized.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and your website visitors can help spread the word about your events using social sharing buttons.
- Event Reporting. Event reports gives you information of all of your registrations and transactions, allowing you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and how much money has been collected.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows you to have more control and options over your event page content and how the information displays to your prospects.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for regular website visitors when website maintenance is needed. You can continue to work on your content during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value For Money: According to the mission statement on their web site, 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 software has been built using a modular and highly efficient model 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:
- Email shortcodes for including customer data in emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service fee to all tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an incredible array of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow users to further expand the capabilities 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 all upcoming events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add on: The Recurring Events management addon lets you put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can schedule as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all of your recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template displays the categories in a simple list. Clicking on a category name displays all events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- Events Social Sharing Add-on: This addon adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your registrants to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files addon lets you override certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart addon is suitable for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is perfect for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Add-on: The Ticketing add on gives you the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on adds the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode 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 Add on: This addon uses the WordPress calendar to display events and categories of events using a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Add-on: The MailChimp addon allows you to auto-register attendees to a specified autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add-ons.
To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
User Testimonials
Here are some of the many testimonials that 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
”I have to say that it has been the right choice for me…I’ve been extremely pleased with the way my site is working.” Robin, RobinTime
”I am in love with your product, I work with many educational institutions that hold classes/events and I will definitely recommend this to all of them, the only time I have seen a system this comprehensive and sophisticated is when an organization I worked with paid a programmer nearly $8,000 for a custom solution, and yet still there are features in your registration system that his didn’t have. Thank you so much for your help and patience.” Abdullah J.
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, event promoter, or event consultant, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, go through the support forum for useful ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management workflow and improve the experience of your event participants.
Product Support
Event Espresso is compatible with most WordPress plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you do need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great user support, as so many of its clients attest:
”Your plugin saved our client nearly $9000 in development costs because it handled the majority of the functionality we were looking for at a much lower cost. EventEspresso’s staff have been very responsive to our needs when we have them (which has been rare, because the plugin is so well coded). Great job on a great plugin!” Brandon P., Experience Farm
Event Espresso provides exceptional support with access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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.
Additionally, 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.
Product Cost
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin features, however, you need to consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This lets you run Event Espresso on one site only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This license allows you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This lets you install Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software retails for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticket Registration Software For WordPress
Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding 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.
Look up the software’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your specific situation, or to report issues and share 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 registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands.
If you own a WordPress-powered site and you plan to run any event that requires managing dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, and/or selling tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso
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