Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings, such as seminars, training classes, charity fund raisers, corporate functions, or even a big event such as a trade exhibit, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event bookings can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You will probably have to co-ordinate event schedules, dates, attendee numbers, data collection, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to event attendees.
There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, 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 costly.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based digital presence, you can download and install an inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticketing Manager Plugin
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin allows you to easily schedule multiple events and begin processing online registrations in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online registrations)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed application that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up ticket sales, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media and autoresponders.
View detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software has been rebuilt using a different structure to enable future expansion. The EE 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 read more about the benefits and features of using the plugin.
More info:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits 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 online presence into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating participants to perform the registration by themselves.
Letting your attendees to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you concentrate more time on delivering a more unique event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your customers to experience.
Some additional benefits include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party service provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and purchase add ons only when you need additional functionality.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online registrations 24/7. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing add ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event share your information with their friends who may also be interested.
- Green And Paperless Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process is transacted entirely online, reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- Own Your Data. You control all the data you obtain from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to users via built-in features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many great built-in to site owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Ready to use in no time.
- Customized Event Registration Form. With Event Espresso you can collect unique information using custom event registration forms on your site to create a customized experience for your clients.
- Event Calendar. Registrants can easily see your events and add these to their schedule using the WordPress calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with several payment gateways, allowing you to collect money before running your events.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary attendee’s registration information for any additional participants.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the likelihood of spammers and robots creating false registrations on your web site with reCAPTCHA settings to validate human activity.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 includes 3 detailed in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. EE 4 lets you understand who your clients are and how they have done business with you.
- Ticketless Events. List events without requiring registrants to get tickets. Use Event Espresso for all forms of events, not just those that accept tickets.
- Event RSS Feeds. Keep your users 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 Events. Draft events enable you to develop an event at your own pace without publishing it to your website. You can keep working on your event until you are ready to take it live, or schedule your event to publish at a later time and date.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso can be set up in 15+ languages, and more translations are being added all the time.
- Upload Event Information. Event Espresso 4 provides an advanced importing feature that lets you easily upload bulk event data all at one time. You can export, edit and import information about events, datetimes, tickets, prices, custom registration questions, venue info, terms, taxonomies, term relationships and more.
- Venue Manager. The venue manager feature in Event Espresso 4 lets information about a venue to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your site to inform attendees of the location of your event. The venue record has many standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays venue details such as venue capacity, venue web address, venue phone number, physical, map, etc. You can also list all of your venues throughout specific sections in your theme as well as on a venue listing page on your website where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have listed for a particular venue.
- Automatic Updating. Event Espresso offers easy 1-click software updating to ensure that you have the newest features and to keep your software installation working with the latest version of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event attendees and your site visitors can tell others about your events using social sharing buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have several different event types like free and paid, conference speakers and breakout sessions, different types of exercise classes, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for your participants to locate what they’re looking for. You can list all events in a category on a custom event category page, make events searchable by category, and color-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, in addition to suggesting other events in the categories that appeal to your visitors.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These allow web developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are completely compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to output a log file with debugging data that can be helpful for developers who are troubleshooting.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: 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 company operates on a modular 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 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including participant data in confirmation emails and email updates.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse the same questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page during the registration process.
Addons
In addition to a comprehensive array of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow customers to significantly expand the functionality of your event management system.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize multiple datetime events into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add on: The Category Accordion template shows event categories in a simple list. Clicking the category name displays the events associated with that category and closes any previously open categories.
- EE4 Events Social Sharing Add-on: This addon adds social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your attendees to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files add-on allows you to override certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Addon Editions: This add-on lets you involve other users 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 WP users roles and allow them different permissions with different capabilities, allowing others to help you manage your events or the events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain areas of your WP dashboard and/or certain parts of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to create geographic regions for other people to manage events, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add on.
- Event Ticketing Add on: The Ticketing addon adds the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you the capacity to scan ticket barcodes. The ticketing add-on 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 mobile app can be used for checking in or checking out attendees and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add on: The Events Table Template addon provides you with 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 lets developers design their own 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 marketing software addon, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture registrant data, track bookings, and accept payments from your website.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Here are some of the many great testimonials that users have posted 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
”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.
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, seminar promoter, or event management professional, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, visit the support forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration workflow and improve the experience of your event customers.
Support
Event Espresso works with with other WordPress plugins and WP themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you do need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent end-user support, as so many of its satisfied users 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 robust support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase 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.
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 count on to organize and manage your events.
Product Licensing Price
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin features, however, you will want to consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This allows you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This license enables you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This license option lets you install Event Espresso on five sites. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Price details for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin sells for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. 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 how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your specific use-case, or to notify developers about issues and give feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing management software, used by thousands.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you plan to run an event that requires managing dates and venues, enrolling participants, and/or reserving seating, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso
***