Do you currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings or registrations, such as seminars, group courses, charity fundraisers, corporate events, or even a big event like a food fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups is a complicated and time-consuming process. You have to manage calendar schedules, available dates and seating allocations, attendee numbers, data administration, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to attendees.
There are a number of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily copy settings for previous events, give event managers more control, create a better user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based website or blog, you can download and install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily set up multiple events and begin receiving bookings in just a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich software that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can use multiple event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform is being rebuilt using a different structure to enable future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
Learn more here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website or blog into an automated and fully featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for attendees to perform the enrolment process themselves.
Letting your enrollees to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you spend more of your energy on organizing a more enjoyable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn in a moment, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your customers to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a third party service provider. The cost is kept low through a model where users buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase add ons when you need additional features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new sign-ups 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with other people they know who may be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process can be performed wholly in digital form, reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with admin and record-keeping.
- Own Your Information. You control all the data you obtain from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its users through standard features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many unique features to website owners. Here are just a few:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Ready to use in no time.
- Custom Event Registration Form. Event Espresso lets you collect unique information using custom event registration forms on your web pages to create a customized experience for your users.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Attendees can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with a WordPress calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with leading payment gateways, allowing you to collect booking fees before running events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to configure the settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details sections.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the chance of spamming and bot software programs making false registrations with reCAPTCHA settings that provide human validation.
- Promotional Codes. Leverage promotional and discount codes to incentivize people to take action without delaying, or simply make your offerings more attractive for others. This is also practical if you want to sell out events close to deadlines.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you know who your clients are and how they have done business with you.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can join a waiting list if your event has reached capacity. Additionally, you can specify that wait-listed registrants pay for their spots if you plan to expand numbers for the event.
- RSS Event Feeds. Keep your users up-to-date about your events, bring in more visitors and expand your content reach with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Keyword Rich Page URLs. Keyword rich URLs leverage your Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” permalinks that use relevant keywords add to the context of your events and improves your search rankings, helping you drive a more targeted audience to your events.
- Country Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings that will be used in your events, including currency, currency signs, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, states or provinces, and so on.
- Exportable Information. You can output all the data gathered from your event participants into Excel or CSV format for creating advanced reports, implementing new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, etc..
- WP WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the standard WordPress Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily add graphic images and format your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any WP post.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso gives you access to an expert community of event managers and other plugin users. You can engage with other Event Espresso users using their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event clients who have not paid yet for their registration with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will reference pre-registered attendees who have not paid their registration yet by name, give them the amount they owe, and include a link to the event, a payment link and a url where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Accurate Event Attendee Manager. You have control of your attendees’ information; who has enrolled, for what event and how much they paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export a list of event attendees to a CSV file for additional reports, send customized payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your event registrants on a person-by-person basis or collectively.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are compatible with WordPress.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registrations for regular website visitors whenever website maintenance is required. You can continue to work on the back-end of your site 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 software has been built using a modular and highly efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with 40+ added features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes participant data in emails and email updates.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during registration.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an amazing range of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow software users to further expand the functionality of your event management system.
Some of these add ons include:
- EE4 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 the event does not have a featured image available, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes many datetime events into a drop-down list.
- Events Calendar Table Template Addon: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can be customized to show the event thumbnail image instead of a date.
- Events Social Sharing Add on: This addon adds 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 Files Add on: The Custom Files add-on provides PHP files that let you bypass certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add on is great 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 add-on lets you promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to each seat.
- Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing add-on adds the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on adds the ability to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add-on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for managing check-in scans at the venue door. Registrants can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The barcode scanner 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 event categories in a nice graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add-on: The new Event Espresso JSON API addon allows other applications, web sites, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso content through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add-ons.
For more details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
User Testimonials
Here are some of the many great testimonials that users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Thanks to you and the rest of the team for Event Espresso – Every time I get a signup for an event, I think about how much time EE saves me – and signups happen while I’m out on the water teaching kayaking, not answering the phone. :-)” Tue Brems Olesen, OnAdventure
”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
”I can’t even imagine what I would want the plugin to do that it doesn’t already do. I’m really happy with the features.” Jim Harmer, Improve Photography
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, event planner, or event professional, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered owner, search the user forum for inspiration and practical ways to improve your event management and registration process or improve the experience of your event attendees.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress coding rules. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great support, as so many of its satisfied plugin users attest:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
The software provides comprehensive support that includes access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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.
Additionally, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to run your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in a number of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin features, however, you need to consider purchasing one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This edition enables you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This license option allows you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This option enables you to run Event Espresso on five sites. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the software sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the software’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a specific situation, or to notify developers about errors and give feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of WordPress site owners.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you intend to run events that require managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, or reserving tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Registration Plugin
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