Manage Events WordPress Archives - WordPress For Non-Techies: Free WordPress Tutorials

Do you currently run or plan to run events that need managing bookings, such as workshops, training courses, charity fundraisers, marketing 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 or participate?

Co-ordinating event registrations is a complicated and time-consuming process. You may need to manage calendar schedules, availability, attendee numbers, data processing, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event registrants.

There are a number of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily replicate repeat events, give event managers more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.

The problem is that this can be expensive.

Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based digital presence, you can set up an inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.

Introducing …

Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Ticketing Registration Software

Plugin Description

The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP allows you to easily set up your event and start receiving online registrations in just minutes.

(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online bookings)

Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.

Create custom registration forms

You can employ several event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.

View detailed information about event attendees

Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform is being rebuilt 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 price. The company plans to eventually migrate completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of using the plugin.

For more details, visit the plugin site here:

Event Espresso

Benefits Of Using Event Espresso

Here are just a few of the benefits 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 digital presence into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.

Increased Business Productivity

By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally eliminating the need to process registrations manually.

Basically, you are facilitating event participants to register themselves.

Letting your participants to do the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you invest more of your time on delivering a more enjoyable event.

Complete Control Over The User Experience

As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.

Additional benefits and advantages include the following:

Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party provider. This is made possible by using a model where users pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase add ons only when you need added features.
More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new event sign-ups 24 hrs a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social add-ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite their friends who may be interested in attending.
Green & Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process can remain wholly online, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-keeping.
Own Your Data. You own all the data obtained from your event attendees.

Features

The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to its users through standard features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.

Event Espresso offers a number of great built-in to WordPress users. Here are just some:

Fast and simple to install and set up. Ready to use in no time.
Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (called datetimes), that these can be managed from a single event.
Custom Notification Email Message. Easily set up custom automated registration and payment notification emails to communicate with event registrants.
Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to registrants and let them choose the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and display venue details throughout other areas of your site.
Default Price Types. Price types let event managers create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing for the system-default ticket.
In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 comes with three useful in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
Manual Registration. you have the option of booking event participants at the door, or sending in paper forms for manual registration later.
Waiting Lists. Prospective participants can join a waiting list if your event is completely sold out. You can also make it a requirement wait-list attendees pay for their spots if you plan to expand numbers for your event.
Private Comments On Contacts. Keep comments about contacts on their profile. Private notes helps you keep a record of when event attendees contacted you, your internal observations, and how you have interacted with them.
Draft Events. Draft events enable you to build an event page over time without publishing it to your website. You can continue developing your event until you are ready to go live, or schedule your event to publish at a future date and time.
Full Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in full control of every aspect of an event’s registration and ticketing, and also allows you to automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, customizable event designs, payment processing, list waiting, limits on attendees, print-ready ticketing and more.
Exportable Data. You can export all of your data collected from event attendees into Excel or CSV format for creating advanced reports, implementing marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
WordPress WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WP Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily insert photos and create and edit your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any other WP post.
A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso gives you access to an expert community of experienced event managers and other plugin users. You can network with other members of the Event Espresso community using their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential customers who have not fully paid for their admission with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click. Your invoices will address registered attendees who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the balance owing, and include a link to the event information, a payment url and a url where they can download a PDF invoice.
Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post type features such as custom fields, post meta data, taxonomies, etc. You can even customize the templates to display event information in your own custom way.

Additional features include:

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for most users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), EE 4 makes possible more complex developments and customizations to the software.
Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for regular site traffic when you need to perform maintenance on your site. You can continue to work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
Flexibility, Autonomy & Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their website, 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 efficient model 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+ additional features, including:

Duplicating events – reduces the work of re-entering event data when adding new events.
Question groups that simplify the process of reusing commonly asked questions for similar events.
Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.

Add ons

As well as a very large array of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow you to significantly enhance the capabilities of the event management system.

Some of these add-ons include:

Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
Recurring Events Management Add-on: The Recurring Events management add on enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months in advance. You can create as many events in the future as you like. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template displays the categories in a simple list. Clicking on a category name shows all events associated with that category and closes any previously open categories.
Social Coupons Integration Add on: If your web 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 can display your events in a range of visually exciting ways.
Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add on is for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add-on lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to every seat.
Multiple Event Registration Add on: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives potential customers the ability to register for 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 Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories via a nice graphical calendar.
JSON API Add-on: The new Event Espresso JSON API addon allows other software 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 its software, including new addons.

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

Event Espresso

Customer Feedback

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

”Tri-South, Inc is using Event Espresso to manage the course catalog, event ticketing, and class registration. [As their developer] I have customized a few items to make the site and plugin a seamless integration. The client is very pleased!” Jenifer Design

”I recently downloaded it to add to a nonprofit site for a Boy Scout troop and the features work wonderfully with what we wanted to accomplish for the site. It allows us to set up calendar, events, and even take payments for trips. At first, I thought that it would be overkill for such a small site, but now I see the possibilities and will definitely be offering Event Espresso to my clients that need an event organization system for their web sites.” Lucy Conn, Troop 462

”Event Espresso is very nice and functional plugin. Set it up is not very easy for a beginner like me, but you have one of the best support team in your side. They answer all questions in a timely manor. I didn’t know anything about setting up the plugins, Thanks to Event Espresso Support team that now I can find my way around this plugin. Event Espresso helps our company to manage the workshops, keep track of our students, manage the emails, and much more. We upgrade from personal License to Business license in just two weeks of using Personal license. I strongly recommend the Business license.” Ted Karlsalr, Omnilargess

Plugin Tips

Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, seminar planner, or event management consultant, there are just countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.

After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, spend a little time visiting the forums for useful ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration process and improve the experience of your event attendees.

Support

Event Espresso is fully compatible with other WP plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you find that you need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great user support, as many of its clients confirm:

”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 incredible support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, priority 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 developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to run your events.

Software Cost

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

Personal Licensing – This option enables you to set up Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
Everything License – This option enables you to set up 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 License – This allows you to run Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one 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 specials being offered. When we last checked, the plugin sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticket Registration System For WordPress

Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.

Additional Info

Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.

Look up the software’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to your particular use-case, or to report issues and share feedback.

For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.

The Bottom Line

Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress website owners.

If you own a WordPress website and you intend to run events that involve scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), enrolling participants, and selling seating, then you will probably not find a better WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.