Do you currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating bookings, such as seminars, group courses, charity fund raisers, social conferences, or even a large-scale event such as a dance party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event registrations is a complicated and time-consuming process. You need to manage event schedules, event dates, participant numbers, data entry, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event registrants.
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 expenses, help you easily copy settings for recurring 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 run a WordPress-based website, you can download and install a very inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Management System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily create your event and begin receiving online bookings in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize your event registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments 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 sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as the platform has been rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate future growth. The Event Espresso 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 the benefits and advantages of this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages 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 current digital presence into an automated and feature-rich event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for participants to enroll themselves.
Allowing your enrollees to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you concentrate more resources on delivering a more enjoyable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your attendees to experience.
Additional plugin benefits include:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party provider. This is made possible through a model where Event Espresso users pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase addons only when you need additional features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event registrations any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with friends who may be interested in attending.
- Green Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process can remain entirely in digital form, eliminating typical paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You own all the data you obtain from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its users via standard features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that you can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to site owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Ready to start using in minutes.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), which these can be managed from a single event.
- WordPress Event Calendar. Participants can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using the WordPress calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with payment gateways, enabling you to collect payments before running events.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration enables event managers to customize the display of Google Maps on your event listing and event details pages.
- Default Price Types. Price types let event managers create new prices that adjust the default ticket price for your system-default ticket.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track all attendees.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. EE 4 provides you with the tools to know who your customers are and how they’ve done business with you.
- Ticketless Events. Promote events without requiring attendees to get tickets. Event Espresso can be used for all kinds of events, not only those that accept tickets.
- Private Notes On Contacts. Keep comments about users on their profile and how you have assisted them. Private notes enables you to keep a record of when event participants contacted you, your internal observations, and how you’ve helped them.
- Works With The Latest WP Version. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you build beautifully-designed event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Multi-Language Software. Event Espresso has been translated into 15+ languages, with more languages planned.
- Exportable Data. You can export all the information collected from event participants into Excel or CSV format for producing reports, planning new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, etc..
- WP WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WP Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily add images and write your event descriptions without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any typical WP post.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso gives you access to a community of experienced event managers, programmers, web designers, marketers and businesses who also use the plugin. You can interact with other members of the Event Espresso community using their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Staff Manager. Save time and keep your information organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in your event description.
- Event Reporting. Quick-view event reports gives you data of all registrations and transactions, allowing you to measure the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and how much money has been collected.
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.
- Control Box Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reorder the user interface to match your workflow. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or completely removed from the workflow configuration.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: 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 goals, the software has been built using a modular and effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes 40+ additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events within the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow end-users to significantly 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 all upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize the events with many datetimes into a dropdown list.
- Events Date Range Template Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template enables your users to browse for events that occur in a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add-on comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Add on: The Custom Files addon lets you override certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart addon is 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 addon lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the experience for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing addon adds the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add on gives you the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for handling check-in scans at the door. Attendees 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 Table Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add-on provides event managers with a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you edit 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 allows web developers to design custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and business marketing software addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture customer data, track bookings, and accept payments from your Event Espresso powered website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:
Testimonials
Here are some of the many great testimonials that customers have written about Event Espresso:
”I want to commend you on a fabulous product which is just the right price for a small non-profit. People are happy with the registration process, as are we! …Thank you SO much for a great product.” Sandra Forero Bush, World Trade Center Tacoma
”I searched long and hard to find something that would serve my needs. This is, by far, the most complete and comprehensive solution I have found.” Bill Hepper, We Teach Live
”Thank you, we just did 2 sell out seminars of 50 attendees in 48 hours using Event Espresso and it was awesome. My wife was able to pick up on the processing backend with ease. You have done a great job on getting this system together – very simple, clear and well laid out With powerful functionality. I am so glad I dumped the old booking application we had and gave Event Espresso a go. Just wanted to say thanks, and thanks for the very patient, friendly and speedy assistance in helping me to get it all set up at the start. Many thanks to you and your team. A grateful customer.” Nicholas de Castella, Emotional Intelligence Trainings
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, conference promoter, or event consultant, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, spend a little time going through the forums for new ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management process and improve the experience of your participants.
Support
Event Espresso works with with all WP 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 customer support, as so many of its end-users confirm:
”Your plugin saved our client nearly $9000 in development costs because it handled the majority of the functionality we were looking for at a much lower cost. EventEspresso’s staff have been very responsive to our needs when we have them (which has been rare, because the plugin is so well coded). Great job on a great plugin!” Brandon P., Experience Farm
Event Espresso provides robust support that includes access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, email 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 web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Cost
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you should consider downloading one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This option lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This enables you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This license enables you to run Event Espresso on 5 domains. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Presently, the plugin is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
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.
Additional Plugin Information
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.
Search the software’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your specific use-case, 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 leading WP event booking and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of WP users.
If you own a WordPress-powered site and you currently run events that require managing dates, times and venues, enrolling attendees, or selling seating, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Management Plugin
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