Do you currently run or plan to run events that require bookings or registrations, such as workshops, training classes, non-profit fund-raisers, networking functions, or even a large-scale event like a dance party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event sign-ups is a complicated and time-consuming process. You will most likely need to manage calendar schedules, available dates and spaces, attendee numbers, data entry, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to participants.
There are many advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily duplicate similar events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be very expensive.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based website or blog, you can install an inexpensive and professional online event booking solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress enables you to easily schedule multiple events and start accepting bookings literally in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed software that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Customize event registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as the plugin has been redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. 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 using the plugin.
More info:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing digital presence into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and 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 manually.
Basically, you are facilitating attendees to enrol on their own.
Letting your participants to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you concentrate more of your time on planning a better event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and registration process that you want your clients to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party provider. The cost is kept low by using a model where Event Espresso users pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then buy add ons when you need extra features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new bookings any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features and add-ons (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event SignUp Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process can be kept entirely in digital form, reducing typical paper waste from tasks related to administration.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the data you obtain from your event attendees.
Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to end-users through built-in features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of great features to WP users. Here are just some:
- Fast and simple to install and use. Be up and running in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration. With Event Espresso you can collect unique data using custom event registration forms on your website to plan a customized experience for your customers.
- Custom Notification Emails. Set up automatic registration and payment confirmation email messages to communicate with your registrants.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospective registrants and let them purchase the ticket(s) that best fits their needs.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and display events data throughout other areas of your site.
- Spam Protection. Reduce the chance of spamming and bot software programs creating fake registrations on your site by using reCAPTCHA option to authenticate human activity.
- 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.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you gain a better understanding of who your clients are and how they have done business with you.
- No Ticket Events. You can promote events without the requirement for attendees to select tickets. Use Event Espresso for all forms of events, not only when tickets are required.
- Private Contact Commenting. Record comments about contacts on their profile. Private notes allows you to keep a record of when users contacted you, your internal observations, and how you’ve interacted with your contacts.
- Optimized For The Latest WP Version. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create beautiful event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso has been translated into over 15 languages, with more translations planned.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for any new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WordPress WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily add images and stylize your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any other WordPress post.
- Attendee Profiles. Manage each attendee’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their information organized.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event registrants who have not made payment for their admission with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click of a button. Your invoices will reference pre-registered customers who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the amount owing, and include a link to the event, a payment link and a url to download a PDF invoice.
- Attendee Reporting. Quick-view event reports gives you information of all of your registrations and transactions, enabling you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and how much money you have collected.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow web-based software developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are compatible with the WordPress development platform.
- Control Box Management & Reorganization. Event Espresso leverages the WP user interface, which gives you the ability to reconfigure the user interface to suit your workflow processes. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from your workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the philosophy stated on their site, Event Espresso’s goal 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 company operates on 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 provides you with over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events in the Event Espresso admin.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service tax to tickets).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow software users to further expand 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 the upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize events with multiple datetimes into a dropdown list.
- 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.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon is included free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on lets you take advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event prices when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered site users will have access to these special events. Members can also input personal information into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event booking form. Your users can also look up event history and pay for new events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Versions: This add on lets you involve staff in the event management process and give new users permission to create events or regional managers permission 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 privileges, allowing staff to help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain sections of your WP dashboard and/or certain sections of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to have geographic responsibilities for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on.
- Multiple Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration addon 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 addon, attendees can register for several events at once and even add additional attendees to any of the same events in the same checkout process.
- Events Calendar Add on: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and event categories in an attractive graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and business marketing plugin addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant data, track bookings, and accept payments from your web site.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website:
Plugin Users – Feedback
Here are some of the many great testimonials that satisfied customers have written about Event Espresso:
”Tri-South, Inc is using Event Espresso to manage the course catalog, event ticketing, and class registration. [As their developer] I have customized a few items to make the site and plugin a seamless integration. The client is very pleased!” Jenifer Design
”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design
”You guys have done an AWESOME job with this system…promise me to keep up the excellent work you guys are doing, for as long as you can… Respect!” Robert Jarnroth, Jarnroth Digital Productions
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, festival promoter, or event professional, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, spend a little time visiting the forums for useful ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow and improve the experience of your event registrants.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with all WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WordPress coding rules. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive user support, as many of its plugin customers confirm:
”Thank you Seth for being so responsive and going above and beyond the call of duty with your app! I highly recommend Event Espresso for its functionality and for the stellar support. Seth has a deep knowledge and understanding of WordPress and has built a tool that is seamless to use for both organizer and attendee alike! After looking at a bunch of alternatives, Event Espresso far surpasses the other apps that are available.” Wendy Troupe, ICS North Pole Express
Event Espresso provides exceptional support including access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, premium 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 WordPress developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can depend on to run and manage your events.
Event Espresso Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software functionality, however, you should consider downloading one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This edition allows you to configure Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This allows you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This license allows you to run Event Espresso on 5 domains. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software retails for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticket Management
Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the software’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums if you have questions related to a specific situation, or to report bugs and share feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress site owners.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run events that require scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), booking participants, and/or reserving tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Management Software
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