Do you currently run or plan to run events that require bookings or registrations, such as workshops, group courses, charity fund-raisers, marketing conferences, or even a large-scale event like a music show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Managing event bookings is a complicated and time-consuming process. You may have to co-ordinate event schedules, available dates and seating, participant numbers, data collection, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and providing tickets to event registrants.
There are many benefits to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily reproduce similar events, give you more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event registration system can be expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based website, you can set up a very inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP software enables you to easily create an event and start accepting online registrations in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize event registration forms
You can employ several event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and email marketing tools.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software has been rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are enabling participants to perform the registration on their own.
Allowing your customers to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you invest more energy on organizing a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party service provider. The cost is kept low through a model where users pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase optional add-ons when you need additional functionality.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online event bookings outside traditional business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite others who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process is completed wholly online, eliminating traditional paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- Own Your Information. You own all the information acquired from your event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to its users via built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of great features to website owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to configure as many types of tickets as you need and set different prices, maximum number of tickets, etc.
- Customized Confirmation Email Message. Configure automated booking and payment confirmation emails to communicate with your attendees.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with payment gateways, allowing you to collect money before running events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables you to configure the look and control settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details sections.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the risk of spammers and bot software programs creating bogus registrations by using reCAPTCHA settings to authenticate human activity.
- Mobile Registration & Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up multiple check-in “stations” and track event attendees.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event participants at the door, or send in paper registration forms for manual inputting later.
- Ticketless Events. List events without the requirement for registrants to get tickets. Event Espresso can be used for all types of events, not only those that need tickets.
- XML RSS Feeds. Automatically update customers, drive quality traffic and expand your content distribution with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- SEO Friendly Page URLs. Keyword rich event page URLs take advantage of your Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” web links that use topic-relevant keywords add to the context of your events and improves your search rankings, helping you bring a more targeted audience to your site.
- Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in full control of every aspect of an event’s registration and ticketing processes, and also lets you automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, customizable event designs, payment processing, list waiting, limits on attendees, printable ticketing and more.
- Default Tickets. If you create identical tickets for many of your events, you can automatically set up as your default ticket for any new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- WordPress WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the default WP Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily add photos and write your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any standard WordPress post.
- Attendee Records. Manage your registrant’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily accessible.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event customers who have not paid yet for their enrollment with a standard but personalized invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will address registered participants who have not paid their registration yet by name, display the amount owing, and include a link to the event information, a payment link and a url to download a PDF invoice.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of types of events such as free and paid, conference speakers and mastermind sessions, different types of programs and program modules, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for event registrants to locate what they’re looking for. You can list all the events in a category on a custom event category page, make the events searchable by category, and color-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, in addition to suggesting new events in the categories that interest your existing customers.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows you to have more control and options over your event pages and how the information displays to prospects.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for normal site visitors whenever you need to carry out maintenance on your website. You can continue to work on your event pages during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: Event Espresso states on their website that their mission 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 in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service fee to each ticket).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during registration.
Add ons
As well as an amazing range of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow you to significantly expand the capabilities of your event management process.
Some of these add-ons include:
- EE4 Events Grid Template Add-on: Displays events in a pure CSS grid-like structure using the featured image. Hovering over the image will display further information. If the event does not have a featured image available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes events with multiple datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template shows the categories as a simple list. Clicking a category name shows the events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- Events Social Sharing Addon: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your attendees to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon allows you to take full advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site will have access to these special events. Members can also add personal data into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event booking form. Users can also look up past events and pay for new events.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart addon is 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 add-on allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart addon lets you manage the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to every seat.
- Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Add-on: The Ticketing add-on adds the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on gives you the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for managing check-in scans at venues. People 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 Calendar Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events using an attractive graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add-on: The Event Espresso JSON API add on enables other software applications, websites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website:
Customer Feedback
Below are a few of the many testimonials that customers have posted about Event Espresso:
“It is a very, very slick plugin. It’s one of those plugins where you install it, change a couple of settings, and boom you’re selling tickets.” Brad Williams, WebDevStudios
”Probably the best event management plugin available.” Materia Inspiration Centre
”Loving the functions and support from Event Espresso. One of the best plugins I’ve ever bought!” Nathan
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, festival promoter, or event management consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered owner, spend a little time visiting the support forum for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management process and enhance the experience of your event attendees.
Support
Event Espresso works with with other WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as many of its customers attest:
“I’m really impressed with not only the application itself but the support. I have rarely seen such a responsive support staff than at EE. They rock…I highly recommend this plugin!” sock2me
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support with access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, one-on-one 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 a solution you can rely on to run your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you may want to consider purchasing one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This license option enables you to install Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This license enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This lets you set up Event Espresso on five domains. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the plugin’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a specific use-case, or to notify developers about bugs and leave feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of event managers.
If you are a WordPress user and you plan to run events that require scheduling dates and venues, enrolling attendees, or selling seating, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Manager Plugin
***