Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as workshops, community courses, not-for-profit fund raisers, marketing events, or even a big event such as a rave party, 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 process. You need to manage event schedules, available dates and seating allocations, participant numbers, data processing, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to attendees.
There are lots of advantages to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily reproduce repeat events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based digital presence, you can easily set up an inexpensive and professional online event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress software lets you easily set up multiple events and begin accepting bookings in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich software that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use several event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups 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 and autoresponders.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as the platform is being revamped using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually phase out Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
More info:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online 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.
Essentially, you are making it easier for event attendees to perform the registration by themselves.
Letting your customers to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you invest more of your energy on delivering a more unique event.
Full 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 users to experience.
Additional benefits include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso gives you an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party provider. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where you buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase add ons only if you need additional features.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event bookings any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features and addons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite other people they know who may be interested.
- Green & Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process can remain wholly in digital form, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the data acquired from event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to its users through built-in features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to create multiple ticket types and set prices, ticket quantity limits, etc.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Participants can easily see your events and add these to their schedule with a calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with leading payment gateways, allowing you to collect payments before running events.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and reuse events data throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the default ticket price for the default ticket.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, set up multiple check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of attendees and confirm everyone who has attended.
- Ticketless Events. Set up events without making it necessary for participants to select tickets. Event Espresso can be used for all forms of events, not just when tickets are needed.
- Private Notes On Contacts. Keep observations about users on their profile. Private notes allows you to keep a record of when event participants contacted you, your internal notes, and how you have interacted with your contacts.
- Optimized For The Most Recent Version Of WordPress. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create visually attractive event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your organization’s profile to be used throughout the plugin and your WordPress themes. The organization information include: business name, address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, primary contact email address, telephone, tax number, company logo, Facebook profile URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
- Import Events. EE 4 provides an advanced importing feature that enables you to import a lot of event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import information about events, datetimes, ticketing information, pricing, registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Venue Manager. The venue manager feature in EE 4 allows details about a venue to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your website to inform users of the location of your event. The venue record has many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays venue details such as venue seating capacity, venue web address, phone number, venue address, Google map, etc. You can also list venue profiles in different sections in your WordPress theme and on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have listed for a given venue.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso provides users with access to an expert community of event managers and plugin users. You can network with other Event Espresso users via their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and your website visitors can spread the word about your event using social media share buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have several different types of events such as free and paid, workshops and mastermind sessions, different kinds of courses, etc. you can categorize these to make it easier for your registrants to locate what they’re looking for. You can display all the events in a category on a custom event category page, make all events searchable by category, and color-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, in addition to suggesting new events in the categories that appeal to your visitors.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow web developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso plugin that are completely compatible with the WordPress development platform.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for regular site visitors when you need to make updates on your site. You can continue to work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: According to the philosophy stated on their website, 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 software has been built using a modular and efficient 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 – simplifies the need to re-enter event information when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to all tickets).
- Default payment status.
Addons
As mentioned previously, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow you to significantly expand the capabilities of your event management process.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display all scheduled events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Addon: The Recurring Events management add-on enables you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can create as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template shows categories in a simple list. Clicking the category name displays all events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Social Coupons Integration Add-on: If your web 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.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template add-on can display your events in a range of visually exciting ways.
- 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 for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon lets you promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add on lets you manage the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives your potential customers the ability to book multiple events at once. In each event listing attendees will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their shopping 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 View Template Add on: The Events Table Template add on gives you a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you modify the look and feel 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 custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on allows you to automatically register attendees to a specific autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website here:
Users – Feedback
Below are some of the many great testimonials that users have written 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
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
”I am in love with your product, I work with many educational institutions that hold classes/events and I will definitely recommend this to all of them, the only time I have seen a system this comprehensive and sophisticated is when an organization I worked with paid a programmer nearly $8,000 for a custom solution, and yet still there are features in your registration system that his didn’t have. Thank you so much for your help and patience.” Abdullah J.
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, concert promoter, or event consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, search the support forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management workflow and enhance the experience of your registrants.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with most WP plugins and themes that follow standard WP coding guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great customer support, as many of its plugin clients attest:
”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe
The Event Espresso plugin provides amazing support with access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, priority 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Event Espresso Price
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you will want to consider using one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This enables you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This allows you to run Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on five sites. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the software sells for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management And Registration System For WordPress
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the plugin’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your specific use-case, or to report problems and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress site owners.
If you own a WordPress web site and you plan to run an event that requires scheduling dates and venues, registering attendees, and/or booking tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable software for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management
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