Does your company currently run or plan to run events that require managing bookings, such as workshops, group courses, non-profit fundraisers, networking conferences, or even a big event such as a regional festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event registrations can be a complex process. You will probably need to manage scheduling, date availability, attendee numbers, data collection, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to attendees.
There are a number of advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily copy settings for similar events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and professional online event booking solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WP plugin enables you to easily create multiple events and start receiving online registrations literally in minutes.
(Set up multiple events and process online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it has been redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually migrate completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about 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 web site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current digital presence into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually doing away with the need to process registrations and signups manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for attendees to enroll by themselves.
Letting your clients to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you focus more of your energy on creating a memorable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to building your own system or using a third-party service. This is made possible through a model where Event Espresso users buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase addons only when you need added features.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new signups 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with their friends who may also be interested.
- Green Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process is performed wholly online, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Information. You control all the information obtained from your event participants.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to end-users through built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many great features to website owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and simple to install and implement. Be up and running in no time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (datetimes), which these can be managed from a single event.
- Event Calendar. Customers can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with a calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with leading payment gateways, enabling you to collect booking payments before running your events.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WordPress theme and display events details throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types let you create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing of the default ticket.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, set up various check-in “stations” and track your participants.
- Event Check-In List. Generate an exportable list of event registrants and check in those who attend.
- No Ticket Events. You can set up events without requiring registrants to get tickets. Event Espresso can be used for all types of events, not just those that require tickets.
- Private Contact Comments. Keep observations about event participants on their profile. Private notes helps you keep records of when event registrants contacted you, your internal comments, and how you’ve interacted with your contacts.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you develop an event page in your own time-frame without publishing it to your site. You can keep developing your event until you are ready to go live, or schedule to publish your event pages at a later time and date.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso can be set up in more than 15 languages, and more languages are being added all the time.
- Default Tickets. If you create similar tickets for many of your events, you can automatically set one of those tickets as your default ticket for your new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- WP WYSIWYG Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WordPress Visual editor, so you can quickly and easily add images and stylize your event descriptions without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any WordPress post.
- Registrant Records. Manage each registrant’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their information organized.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential attendees who have not fully paid for their admission with a standard but personalized invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will reference pre-registered participants who have not paid their registration yet by name, give them the amount they owe, and include a link to the event, a payment link and a link where they can download the invoice.
- Accurate Attendee Manager. You control your attendees’ details; who has registered, for what event and how much they have paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export a list of attendees to a CSV file for additional uses, send custom payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your participants on a person-by-person basis or collectively.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows you to have more control and options over your event page content and how your information displays to prospects.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 lets you generate a log file with debugging data that can be useful for web developers who are troubleshooting.
- 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 mission, the software has been built using a 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:
- Live-filtering when searching for events in the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page in the registration process.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an amazing range of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow you to further enhance the capabilities of managing an event.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display upcoming events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes the events with multiple datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template shows categories as a simple list. Clicking a category name shows the events related to that category and closes any previously open categories.
- Social Coupons Integration Addon: If your website 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 Files Add-on: The Custom Files add-on provides PHP files that let you bypass 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 perfect for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart addon allows you to offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to every seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Addon: The Multi-Event registration addon gives your potential attendees 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 Multiple 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.
- Events Table Template Add-on: The Events Table Template addon provides you with a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to change 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 developers to design their own custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add-on allows you to automatically register attendees to a chosen autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.
For complete details about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website here:
Users – Feedback
Here are some of the 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
”This really is a hell of a plugin. For me, it’s probably the final nail in the coffin for Joomla, as WP can now pretty much do EVERYTHING Joomla does, but better. Love the simplicity of this plugin!” Sam, Web Contempo
”I’m using it on multiple sites and enjoying it. It’s simple and as others have stated… fast service and real help.” Arlen Nagata
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, show planner, or event management professional, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, go through the forums for new ideas and practical suggestions to improve your event management workflow and improve the experience of your attendees.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive user support, as so many of its 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 amazing support with access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, one-on-one 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.
Additionally, 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 run your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin features, however, you should consider using one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This license option allows you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This allows you to set up 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 Edition – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
The cost to purchase the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin is selling for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Additional Plugin Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the plugin’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a specific situation, or to report errors and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used and trusted by thousands of WP site owners.
If you own a WordPress site and you intend to run events that require scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), registering participants, or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a better WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
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