Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require handling registrations, such as seminars, group classes, not-for-profit fundraisers, social events, or even a big event such as a rave party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event registrations can be a complex and time-consuming process. You will most likely need to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and seating, registration numbers, data entry, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event attendees.
There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily replicate previously-run events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-powered site, you can download and install an inexpensive and highly professional online event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily set up your event and start processing bookings literally in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Customize your event registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media and email marketing systems.
View detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older EE 3, as the platform has been redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future growth. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually transition completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
For more details go here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current online presence into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Essentially, you are enabling event attendees to perform the registration process on their own.
Letting your clients to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you spend more resources on planning a better event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your attendees to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost 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 requirements of most users) and then buy add ons only when you need extra functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event bookings outside traditional business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social addons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with other people they know who may be interested.
- Green & Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process can be performed entirely in digital form, eliminating traditional paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You own all the data collected from event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to users through built-in features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of built-in to website owners. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Customized Event Registration. Event Espresso lets you collect specific data using custom event registration forms on your web site to create a great experience for your users.
- Customized Confirmation Email Message. Easily configure custom automatic booking and payment notification email messages to communicate with event attendees.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso provides integration with leading payment gateways, enabling you to collect payments before running events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to configure the look and control settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details sections.
- Default Prices. Set up events fast with pre-configured default pricing.
- Promotional Codes. Provide promotion and discount codes to incentivize prospects to take action now, or make your offerings more affordable for others. This is also practical for helping to sell out events close to deadlines.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event attendees when they show up, or sending in paper forms for manual submission later.
- Ticketless Events. List events without the requirement for registrants to get tickets. Use Event Espresso for any kind of event, not only when tickets are needed.
- Public Commenting. Add social a new level of interaction to your events by allowing potential registrants to interact with you online via commenting and past participants to post feedback that can help others consider whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for comments are set up using the WordPress commenting section.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you build your event at your own pace without displaying it live on your site. You can continue developing your event pages until you are ready to publish it live on your site, or schedule your event pages to publish at a later time and date.
- Multi-Language Application. Event Espresso has been translated into 15+ languages, and more translations are being added all the time.
- Default Tickets. If you create identical tickets for most of your events, you can automatically set one of those tickets as your default ticket for your new events simply by checking a box.
- Venue Profiles. The venue manager in EE 4 lets information about a venue to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your website to inform users of the location of your event. The venue record displays many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you republish information such as venue capacity, venue web address, venue phone number, physical, maps, etc. You can also list venue profiles on different sections in your theme and on a venue listing page on your site where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a specific venue.
- Attendee Profiles. You can manage your customer’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their records organized and easily within reach.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event participants who have not paid in full for their admission with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with just one click. Your invoices will reference pre-registered customers who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the balance owing, and include links to the event, a payment link and a url to download a PDF invoice.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can also customize your templates to display events in your own custom way.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for non-technical 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 enables more complex developments and customizations to the plugin.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to output a log file with debugging data that can be helpful for developers who are potential plugin errors.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their website, Event Espresso’s goal 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 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 edition of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 added features, including:
- Duplicating events – eliminates the need to re-enter event information when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service tax to each ticket).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Addons
In addition to a comprehensive array of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to significantly enhance the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Grid Template Addon: 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, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Custom Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes many datetime events into a dropdown list.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to search for events that occur within a certain date range.
- Events Social Sharing Add-on: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your attendees to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Template Add-on: The Custom Template add-on is capable of displaying your event lists in a number of visually exciting 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 directly from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to each seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration addon gives your potential attendees the ability to book 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 Add on: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and event categories using an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add-on lets you auto-register attendees to a specific mailing autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add ons.
For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website:
Testimonials
Here are some of the many 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
”When you can get a company to expend more money switching systems just to use your plugin…you’ve really accomplished something.” David, House of Prayer
”I played around with the free version for a couple hours then purchased the Pro for a client. Love it and so do they! Sweetest Event plugin I have tried.” Bill Chambers, Bill Chambers Design
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, seminar promoter, or event management professional, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, go through the forums for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration process or improve the experience of your event registrants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you find that you need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as many of its satisfied customers confirm:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
The Event Espresso plugin provides robust support with access to a support forum, 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 a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to run and manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin features, however, you should consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This option enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This license option lets you set up Event Espresso on 5 domains. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the software is being retailed for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Additional Plugin Info
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 tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a specific situation, or to report bugs and leave feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of companies.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run events that require scheduling dates and venues, registering participants, and/or reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Management System
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