Do you currently run or plan to run events that need handling registrations, such as seminars, training courses, non-profit fund raisers, networking events, or even a large-scale event such as a dance party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event registrations is a complicated and time-consuming process. You will most likely need to manage scheduling, available dates and seating allocations, participant numbers, data collection, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to participants.
There are lots of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily replicate similar events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based website, you can install a very inexpensive and highly professional online event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Manager And Registration Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software lets you easily create your event and start processing online registrations literally in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online registrations)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and email marketing applications.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software has been redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually migrate completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
More info:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the 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 existing website into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are enabling participants to perform the registration process themselves.
Allowing your participants to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you focus more resources on organizing a more unique event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own system or using a third-party provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where you purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase optional add ons when you need extra features.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event sign-ups 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing features and addons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with other people they know who may also be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event booking process remains entirely in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper waste from tasks related to administration.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information obtained from event attendees.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to its users via standard features (these come with the plugin) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to WP users. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Customized Event Registration. Event Espresso lets you collect specific information using custom event registration forms on your web pages to prepare a customized experience for your clients.
- Customizable Event Designs. Match your website’s design for your events and enrollments page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and elements, plus HTML or CSS.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you a number of ways to manage taxes for an event and provide reports of tax fee components to registrants when purchasing tickets. You can administer taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WP theme and display registrant information throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the likelihood of spammers and bot software programs making false registrations with reCAPTCHA tools to provide human authentication.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event participants when they show up, or send in paper-based forms for manual submission later.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has become sold out. Additionally, you can specify that waiting list attendees pre-pay if you plan to expand numbers for your event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential customers to interact with you online via commenting and previous attendees to post feedback that can help others decide whether or not to register. Moderation settings for public comments are configured via the WP built-in commenting settings.
- SEO Friendly Page URLs. Keyword rich event page URLs leverage your WordPress site’s Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” permalinks that include relevant keywords add to the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you bring more visitors to your website.
- Country-specific Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings to be used for your events, such as currency, currency symbols, decimal characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, and so on.
- Import Event Data. EE 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that lets you quickly upload bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, ticketing details, prices, registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in 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 WordPress post.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso lets you interact with an expert community of experienced event managers and plugin users. You can engage with other Event Espresso users through their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential registrants who have not paid yet for their booking with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click. Your invoices will address pre-registered attendees who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the balance owing, and include links to the event, a payment url and a url to download a PDF invoice.
- Event Reports. Quick-view event reporting gives you data of your registrations and transactions, enabling you to measure the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue has been collected.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows you to have more control and options over the content of your events and how the information displays to your readers.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for regular website traffic when you need to make updates on your website. You can continue to work on your event pages during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value: According to the philosophy stated on their 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 mission, the company operates on a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – reduces the need to re-enter event data when adding new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service fee to every ticket).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as an incredible array of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow you to further enhance the capabilities of events.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display upcoming events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add on: The Recurring Events management add on enables you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months in advance. You can create as many events in the future as you need. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to search for events that occur within a certain date range.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Add-on: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your registrants to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon allows you to take advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site will have access to your special events. Members can also store personal details into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Your users can also look up past events and pay for future events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add on Editions: This add-on lets you involve your staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the ability 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 privileges, allowing others to help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain sections of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain parts of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to create geographic regions for other people to manage events, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add on.
- Event Ticketing Addon: The Ticketing add on adds the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on adds the capacity to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for handling check-in scans at venues. Registrants 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 attendees and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add on gives event managers a simple and 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 lets developers build their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp addon allows you to automatically register attendees to a selected mailing list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software, including new add-ons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Below are just some of the many great testimonials that plugin users have posted 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
”Probably the best event management plugin available.” Materia Inspiration Centre
”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 an education services provider, presenter, workshop promoter, or event management consultant, there are just countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, search the forums for tips and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration process or improve the experience of your attendees.
Support
Event Espresso works with with all WP plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WordPress coding guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as many of its clients attest:
”It’s magical. Support is amazing, plugin is simple to use, a 3 year old could use the iPhone app…it all is very impressive and professional.” David, House of Prayer
The Event Espresso plugin provides incredible support with access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase 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 a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software options, however, you will want to consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This lets you install Event Espresso on one site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This enables you to run Event Espresso on 5 sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin sells for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management And Registration Software For WordPress
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your specific use-case, or to report problems and give feedback.
For all 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 management plugin, used by thousands of WP site owners.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you plan to run an event that involves managing dates and venues, enrolling participants, or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management System
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