Do you currently run or plan to run events that need to accept bookings or registrations, such as seminars, group classes, charity fund raisers, social events, or even a big event like an exhibition, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a complex and time-consuming process. You need to manage scheduling, availability, registration numbers, data collection and storage, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event attendees.
There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily duplicate recurring events, give you more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-powered web site, you can download and install an inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress enables you to easily create an event and start accepting online bookings literally in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich plugin 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 registration and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media and autoresponders.
View detailed information about event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it has been redeveloped 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 company plans to eventually move completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages 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 existing website into an automated and fully featured event management website … 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 a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are enabling event participants to perform the registration on their own.
Letting your clients to do the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you invest more energy on delivering a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your attendees to experience.
Some additional benefits include:
- Reduced Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party provider. The cost is kept low through a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy add-ons only if you need new features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online signups outside normal business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features and add-ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite their friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event registration process is transacted wholly online, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You control all the information collected from your event participants.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to start accepting registrations in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to set up as many types of tickets as you need and specify different pricing options, limits on ticket quantities, etc.
- Customized Confirmation Email Message. Set up automated booking and payment confirmation emails to communicate with event attendees.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to registrants and let them choose the ticket(s) that best fits their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WordPress theme and reuse venue details throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the risk of spamming and robots making fake registrations on your web site with reCAPTCHA features to authenticate human activity.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you know who your customers are and how they have done business with you.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can join a waiting list if your event has reached maximum capacity. Additionally, you can make it a requirement waiting list members pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- Private Contact Commenting. Record comments about a contact on their profile and how you have assisted them. Private commenting allows you to keep records of when event participants contacted you, your internal observations, and how you have assisted them.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you develop your event over multiple work sessions without publishing it to your site. You can work on your event until you are ready to go live, or schedule to publish your event at a future date and time.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your profile to display throughout Event Espresso and your WordPress themes. Organization fields include: company name, street address, city, state, country, zip code, email address, phone, VAT/tax number, company logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ URL, Instagram URL.
- Exportable Data. You can export all the data gathered from your event attendees into Excel or CSV format for producing advanced reports, devising new marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Event Venue Management. The venue manager in EE 4 lets information about a venue to be made available throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your site to inform potential participants 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 republish venue details such as venue capacity, venue web address, telephone number, physical and/or virtual location, maps, etc. You can also list all of your venues on various locations on your theme as well as on a venue listing page on your site where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have booked for a particular venue.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso gives you access to a community of experienced event managers, software programmers, designers, marketers and businesses who also use the plugin. You can interact with other Event Espresso users through their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and website visitors can help spread the word about your events using social media share buttons.
- 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 events in your own custom way.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso plugin that are 100% compatible with WordPress.
- Metabox Management And Organization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reorganize the user interface to match your workflow process. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or entirely removed from the page.
- 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 objectives, the software has been built using 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 40+ additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a common set of questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as an amazing range of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow end-users to further enhance the functionality of the event management process.
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. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events manager add on enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can create as many future events as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Calendar Table Template Add on: The Calendar Table template is a list template with a bold date and customizable “register now” button. The template can be customized to show an event thumbnail instead of the date.
- Events Social Sharing Add on: Add 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 allows you to bypass certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Addon Editions: This addon lets you involve others in the event management process and give new users permission to create events or regional managers the ability to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and give them different permissions with different capabilities, so others can help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain parts of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain areas 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 addon.
- EE4 Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing addon adds the capacity 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 venues. Customers 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.
- Events Calendar Addon: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories in a nice graphical calendar.
- Infusionsoft Integration Add on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing software add-on, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant 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 more details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:
User Testimonials
Here are some of the many great testimonials that users have written about Event Espresso:
”Congratulations on an absolutely fantastic plugin. I’m really impressed with its functionality and add on features and will definitely upgrade my client’s production site to the premium version (when ready for launch) to incorporate all the features. As I have told another client “this plugin is the cat’s meow”.” Pete Mansel
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
”Hello. I wanted to say that I’ve purchased Event Espresso twice now for two different organizations and have had great success with the purchases. Outside of photography, I also build small websites with WordPress as the CMS. I built two websites for two different martial arts organizations who host yearly seminars and tournaments. The plug in has provided a way for attendees to sign up online from both Canada and the United States with ease, and also allowed the organizations to easily manage payments, attendee lists, and many other aspects of the events. Thanks to Seth for creating such a great plug in, and for your constant support!” James Zedd, James Zedd Photography
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, festival promoter, or event consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, visit the forums for inspiration and practical ways to improve your event management process or enhance the experience of your registrants.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow WP coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as many of its satisfied 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 plugin provides great support including access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, custom development 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to run and manage your events.
Product Price
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you will want to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal Edition – This license lets you set up Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This license lets you configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This enables you to install Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the software is being retailed for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional 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.
Use the plugin’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to notify developers about problems and give feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of people.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you plan to run events that involve scheduling dates, times and venues, enrolling participants, and/or reserving 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 – Event Registration & Ticket Manager
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