Do you currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings or registrations, such as seminars, group courses, non-profit fundraisers, networking events, or even a big event like a rave party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Managing event registrations can be a time-consuming process. You will most likely be required to co-ordinate calendar schedules, dates, participant numbers, data processing, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to attendees.
There are lots of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and reduce costs, help you easily reproduce previous events, give event managers more control, create a better customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered site, you can download and install an inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily set up your event and start accepting online bookings literally in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich application that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as it has been redeveloped using a different structure to enable future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
For more details go here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing digital presence into an automated and feature-rich event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing options 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 doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for participants to register by themselves.
Letting your participants to do the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you spend more of your time on organizing a better event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution or using a 3rd party service provider. This is made possible by using a model where you buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase add-ons only when you need extra features.
- More Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event sign-ups 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social and marketing features and add ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite others who may also be interested.
- Green Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event registration process can be transacted wholly in digital form, reducing typical paper waste from tasks related to administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You control all the information gathered from event participants.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers through standard features (these come with the software) and additional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In EE 4, events can have multiple dates and times (called datetimes), that these can be managed from a single event.
- Customizable Event And Registration Page Designs. Match your site’s design for your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and components, and HTML and/or CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to registrants so they can purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary attendee’s registration details for any additional attendees.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing for the default ticket.
- Discount Codes. Provide promotional and multiple discount codes to incentivize people to make a buying decision without hesitation, or make your offers more appealing for price-sensitive prospects. This is also practical for helping to sell-out events close to deadlines.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 provides you with the tools to gain a better understanding of who your clients are and how they’ve done business with you.
- No-Ticket Events. You can set up events without the requirement for registrants to book tickets. Event Espresso can be used for all types of events, not only when tickets are required.
- XML RSS Feeds. Automatically update users, bring in more visitors and reach a wider number of prospects with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Keyword-Rich URLs. Keyword rich event page Web links take advantage of your WordPress site’s Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly urls that include relevant keywords enhance the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you get more traffic to your website.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your organization’s profile to display throughout Event Espresso and your WP themes. Organization fields include: organization name, street address, city, state, country, zip code, primary contact email address, telephone number, tax number, business logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
- Default Tickets. If you create identical tickets for many of your events, you can automatically set up as your default ticket for your new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Event Venue Manager. The venue management feature in EE 4 lets information about a venue to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your site to inform attendees of your event’s location. The venue profile displays many standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you reuse venue details like venue capacity, venue site URL, venue phone number, venue location details, map, etc. You can also list all of your event venues on various sections on your theme and on a venue listing page on your website where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have listed for a given venue.
- Registrant Records. Manage your attendee’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their records organized and easily within reach.
- Team Member Management. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as team member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in any event description.
- 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:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow web-based software developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are fully compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registrations for normal website traffic when you need to make changes on your website. You can continue to work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & 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 objectives, 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 includes 40+ additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes registrant data in notification emails and email updates.
- Default surcharge (similar to applying a service tax to tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Add-Ons
As well as an amazing array of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow end-users to further enhance the functionality of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events management add on lets you put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months in advance. You can create as many future events as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template displays event 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 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.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon lets you take advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give your users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event pricing when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site can have access to these special events. Members can also enter personal information into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event registration form. Your users can also view event history and pay for future events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Versions: This add-on lets you involve others in the event management process and give new users the ability to create events or regional managers the capacity to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and allow them different permissions with different capabilities, so others can help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain parts of your WP dashboard and/or certain areas of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to control factors geographically for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add on.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives your potential attendees the ability to register for 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 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 Table Template Addon: The Events Table Template addon gives event managers a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to edit 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 design their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and marketing software add-on, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track enrollments, and accept payments from your website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new addons.
For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
User Testimonials
Here are a few of the testimonials that satisfied users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Event Espresso is so easy to use yet feature rich and stable. It is a cornerstone of our site and our success.” Fraser Barner, Speaker’s Lab
”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
”At first we looked at CVENT for one of our clients and they wanted $16,000 per year for 3000 event attendees + fees totaling $22k. That is before Staff and Webinar fees. Worst of all we had to prepay the $16k amount even if we never used all 3000 attendees. That was when we looked at Event Espresso and we realized we could build our own event system for less than 16K. For the most part we have been very satisfied with our decision. The real ROI will come next year when they don’t have to pay another 16k-22K! Over the next 5-6 years we should be able to claim that we saved the company over $100,000 – Thanks Event Espresso!” David Waterman (Long Version), KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
Useful Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, show promoter, 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 licensed user, search the user forum for inspiration and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your customers.
Support
Event Espresso works with with other WP plugins and WP themes that follow standard WP development guidelines. If you find that you need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as so many of its end-users confirm:
”These guys are right on any problem or issue or even general questions. You can’t really put a value high enough on the kind of support these guys offer.” Mark Wigston, Muskoka Graphics
Event Espresso provides exceptional support including access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, one-on-one 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 an established team of experienced web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you need to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This license allows you to set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This allows you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This lets you set up Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a specific use-case, or to report problems and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of people.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run events that involve scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, and reserving seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticket Registration Plugin For WordPress
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