Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need to accept registrations, such as seminars, group courses, not-for-profit fund raisers, networking functions, or even a large-scale event like a food fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Co-ordinating event registrations is a complex process. You will probably need to manage calendar schedules, dates, participant numbers, data processing, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to participants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily duplicate similar events, give you more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered web site, you can download and install a very inexpensive and professional online event booking solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily schedule an event and begin processing online registrations in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed plugin that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can employ various event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been rebuilt using a different structure to accommodate future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually migrate completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
More info:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website or blog into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically doing away with the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are enabling event attendees to perform the registration themselves.
Letting your attendees to do the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you invest more of your resources on delivering a more enjoyable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your clients to experience.
Additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Less Costs: Event Espresso provides you with an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a 3rd-party provider. This is made possible through a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy add ons when you need additional functionality.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event sign-ups 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people interested in registering for your event share your information with others who may also be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process is conducted entirely online, reducing typical paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You own all the data you collect from event attendees.
Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to its customers via standard features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of great features to website owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in no time.
- Customized Event Registration Forms. With Event Espresso you can gather unique data using custom event registration forms on your web site to plan a customized experience for your customers.
- Event Calendar. Attendees can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule using the WordPress calendar.
- Ticket Selector. Present a number of ticket options to prospective registrants and let them choose the ticket(s) that best fits their needs.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WP theme and reuse registrant data throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Create events fast by pre-configuring default prices.
- Discount And Promotional Codes. Provide promotion and multiple discount codes to incentivize visitors to register now, or make your offerings more appealing for others. Also useful for helping to sell-out events close to timelines.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you know who your customers are and how you have previously done business with them. Your Contact Profile section stores updated records like the name, biography, contact details, event registration information, private comments, etc. about each attendee.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is full. You can also make it a requirement wait-listed registrants pre-pay if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- RSS Feeds. Keep your blog readers up-to-date about your events, bring in more visitors and reach a wider number of prospects with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events allow you to develop an event page over time without displaying it live on your site. You can keep working on your event pages until you are ready to go live, or schedule your event page to publish at a later date and time.
- Country-specific Settings. You can configure the country and currency settings to be used in your events, such as currency name, currency signs, decimal signs, characters and places, country codes, regions, etc.
- Bulk Import Event Data. EE 4 provides a CSV-based importing capability that lets you import bulk event data at once. You can export, edit and import data for events, datetimes, ticketing information, prices, registration questions, venues, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the standard WP WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert photos and write your event descriptions without having to know HTML or CSS, just like any standard WP post or page.
- Registrant Records. You can manage your attendee’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their data organized.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and your site visitors can help create a wider exposure for your events using social media sharing 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 also customize the templates to display event information in your own unique way.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows developers to have more control and options over the content of your event pages and how your information displays to your prospects.
- Metabox Management And Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to organize the user interface to match your workflow. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from the workflow configuration.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value For Money: According to the philosophy stated on their web site, 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 highly effective model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:
- Duplicating events – streamlines the work of re-entering event information when adding new events.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse the same questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to a comprehensive range of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow customers to significantly expand the functionality of events.
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 an event does not have a featured image, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events manager addon enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can create as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of your recurring events.
- 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 also be customized to display an event thumbnail instead of the date.
- Social Coupons Integration Add on: If your site uses Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- Custom Files Add-on: The Custom Files add-on allows you to 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 add-on 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 customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing addon gives you the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on adds the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the venue 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 registrants and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add-on gives event managers an easy-to-use system that lets you edit the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also enables developers to design custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
- JSON API Add on: The new Event Espresso JSON API add-on lets other software applications, web sites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso content through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software, including new addons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Here are some of the many testimonials that satisfied 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
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
”Loving the functions and support from Event Espresso. One of the best plugins I’ve ever bought!” Nathan
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, conference promoter, or event professional, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered owner, search the user forum for new ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration process or improve the experience of your event registrants.
Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WP plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent end-user support, as many of its plugin customers confirm:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
The Event Espresso plugin provides robust support with access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, custom development 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 a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to organize and manage your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in different plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you will want to consider using one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This lets you run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This option lets you set up Event Espresso on five domains. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the plugin’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to notify developers about problems and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event booking and ticketing management software, used by thousands.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run any event that requires scheduling dates and venues, booking attendees, and selling seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso
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