Do you currently run or plan to run events that require bookings, such as seminars, community classes, charity fundraisers, corporate events, or even a large-scale event such as an arts & crafts, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event registrations can be a complex process. You have to manage scheduling, availability, participant numbers, data collection and storage, payment processing and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to participants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower costs, help you easily duplicate previously-run events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event booking system can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered digital presence, you can easily install an inexpensive and highly professional online event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Manager System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily set up multiple events and start accepting registrations in just minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich application that gives you full 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 bookings and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing updates.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older EE 3, as the platform is being rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually phase out EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of this plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into a fully-featured event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing options 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 increase your business productivity by literally eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are facilitating event attendees to perform the registration on their own.
Letting your clients to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you invest more of your resources on creating a better event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party service provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase addons only if you need extra features.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online bookings any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing features and add-ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with other people they know who may be interested in attending.
- Green Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process is conducted wholly online, reducing traditional paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information obtained from your event attendees.
Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to its customers via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to start accepting registrations in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you create as many different types of tickets as you need and specify separate pricing options, number of tickets, etc.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. You can customize your events and enrollments page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and elements, as well as HTML and/or CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with payment gateways, allowing you to collect registration payments before running the events.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your theme and reuse events information throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the base ticket pricing of the system-default ticket.
- Promotional Codes. Offer promotion and multiple discount codes to incentivize prospects to register without delaying, or make your events more attractive for others. Also useful for helping to sell out events close to timelines.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you understand who your clients are and how you have done past business with your customers. The Contact Profile section stores updated records such as the name, biography, contact information, event registration details, private comments, and more about each attendee.
- Admin Pre-approval. Control who can and cannot attend your events.
- Private Commenting On Contacts. Keep comments about contacts on their profile and how you’ve assisted them. Private notes helps you keep records of when users contacted you, your internal notes, and how you have assisted your customers.
- Optimized For The Latest WP Version. The EE 4 user interface follows the WordPress guidelines to help you build aesthetically enhanced event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your profile to be deployed throughout the software and your WP themes. Your organization information include: company name, address, city, state, country, zip code, primary contact email address, phone, VAT/tax number, your logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn URL, Pinterest profile URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
- Exportable Information. You can export all of your data collected from event participants into Excel or CSV format for compiling reports, implementing marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Event Venue Manager. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 allows details about a venue to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front-end of your website to inform users of your event’s location. The venue record displays many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you republish information like venue seating capacity, venue site URL, venue phone number, physical, maps, etc. You can also list all of your venues throughout different parts on your WordPress theme as well as on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a particular venue.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso provides users with access to a community of experienced event managers, programmers, web designers, digital marketers and businesses who also use the software. You can interact with other members of the Event Espresso community via their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media pages on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and your website visitors can spread the word about your event using social share buttons.
- Attendee Reporting. Event reporting gives you information of all registrations and transactions, allowing you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and amount of revenue you have collected.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows you to have more control and options over your content and how the information displays to your site visitors.
- Control Box Management And Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to reorder the user interface to match your workflow processes. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from the workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & 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 software has been built using a modular and efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes customer data in emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service fee to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to a comprehensive number of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow you to further enhance the capabilities of your event management process.
Some of these add ons include:
- Events Grid Template Add-on: Displays events in a pure CSS grid-like structure using the featured image. Hovering over the image will display further information. If the event does not have a featured image, a default image will be used instead.
- Recurring Events Management Addon: The Recurring Events manager addon allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months ahead. You can schedule as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you want. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Addon: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to search 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 addon comes free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template add on can display your events in a number of visually exciting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add-on Editions: This add-on lets you include others in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the capacity 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 allow them different permissions with different capabilities, so your staff can help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain parts of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain areas 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.
- Event Ticketing Add-on: The Ticketing add on adds the ability to create 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 venue door. Customers 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 Calendar Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories via a nice graphical calendar.
- JSON API Addon: The new Event Espresso JSON API add on gives permission for other applications, web sites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso details through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new addons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website:
Testimonials
Below are some of the many great testimonials that plugin users have posted 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
”You can tell that the Event Espresso team is really passionate about their work, and that they care and spend a lot of time helping people work with their plugin and use it with their events – it’s something every WordPress service should aim for.” Ryan Imel, WPCandy
”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 an education services provider, trainer, seminar planner, or event management professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, spend a little time researching the user forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management workflow and improve the experience of your participants.
Product Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great customer support, as so many of its clients confirm:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
Event Espresso provides incredible support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, priority 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 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 manage your events.
Event Espresso Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you should consider purchasing one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal License Edition – This license allows you to configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This license lets you configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer License – This edition enables you to install Event Espresso on 5 sites. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Management
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Additional Plugin Info
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 software’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your specific situation, or to notify developers about errors and share feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of people.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run events that involve managing dates and venues, booking attendees, and/or booking seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso
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