Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require handling bookings or registrations, such as workshops, training courses, non-profit fundraisers, marketing functions, or even a large-scale 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 sign-ups is a complex process. You need to co-ordinate calendar schedules, available dates and seating allocations, registration numbers, data collection, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event participants.
There are lots of benefits to setting up an automated web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower costs, help you easily reproduce similar events, give you more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based digital presence, you can easily install an inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Management And Registration Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily create an event and start receiving 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 full control over the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket-selling, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Note: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software is being redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about this plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just some of the many 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 website or blog into a fully-featured event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee 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 literally doing away with the need to process registrations and signups manually.
Essentially, you are enabling event attendees to perform the registration by themselves.
Letting your attendees to do all of the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you invest more of your time on organizing a memorable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and booking process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin gives you a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party service. The cost is kept low through a model where users purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase add ons only when you need added functionality.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new event signups 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing features and add-ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite their friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Green Event Sign-Up Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process is performed entirely online, reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You control all the data gathered from event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to end-users through standard features (these are included with the software) and additional features that customers can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Custom Event Registration Form. Event Espresso lets you gather specific data using custom event registration forms on your web pages to plan a unique experience for your event participants.
- Event Calendar. Participants can easily see your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with the WordPress calendar.
- Tax Administration Options. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of ways to handle taxes for an event and provide reports of tax fee components to registrants when purchasing tickets. Event managers can administer taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to configure the look and control settings of Google Maps on your event listing and event details pages.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly by pre-configuring system-default ticket prices.
- Promotional Codes. Provide promotion and discount codes to encourage people to take action immediately, or make your events more appealing for others. This is also practical for helping to sell out events close to deadlines.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you understand who your clients are and how they have done business with you.
- Ticketless Events. Create events without requiring attendees to get tickets. Use Event Espresso for all forms of events, not only when tickets are required.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by encouraging potential customers to interact with you online via commenting and past attendees to post comments that can help others consider whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for public comments are set up using the WordPress default commenting system.
- Keyword-Rich Page URLs. Keyword rich URLs take advantage of your Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” web links that include relevant keywords add to the context of your pages and is favored by search engines, helping you get more potential customers to your events.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso is currently available in over 15 languages, with more languages coming soon.
- Exportable Information. You can export all the information gathered from event attendees into Excel or CSV format for producing advanced reports, implementing new marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, etc..
- Event Venue Profiles. The venue manager feature in Event Espresso 4 allows details about a venue to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your site to inform users of the location of your event. The venue profile displays many standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also lets you add information such as venue capacity, venue website, telephone number, venue location details, map, etc. You can also list venue profiles on specific locations on your WordPress theme as well as on a venue archive page on your site where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a specific venue.
- Event Espresso Community. Event Espresso gives you access to an expert community of event managers and other plugin users. You can interact with other members of the Event Espresso community using their community chat room, support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event attendees who have not paid yet for their enrollment with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will address registered customers who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the balance they owe, and include a link to the event, a payment url and a link where they can download a PDF invoice.
- Categorize Events. If you have multiple types of events like free and paid, workshops and breakout sessions, different types of courses, etc. you can categorize these to help event attendees to locate what they’re searching for. You can display all the events in a category on a custom event category page, make events searchable by category, and color-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, as well as suggesting other events in the categories that interest your existing customers.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for non-technical WP users, and also robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and web-based software developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), EE 4 makes possible more complex enhancements and customizations to the plugin.
- Metabox Management And Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to reorder the user interface to suit your workflow processes. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or deleted from the page.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & Value: According to the mission statement on their website, Event Espresso’s objective 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 that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also comes with 40+ additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – simplifies the need to re-enter event details when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service fee to each ticket).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an incredible number of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow users to further enhance the capabilities of events.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display the upcoming events by location. 4 maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events management add on allows you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months in advance. You can add as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in advance as you want. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- 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 also be customized to show the event thumbnail image 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 add-on is included free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on allows you to take full advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your users a special incentive by offering member prices 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 add personal information into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Users can also view event history and make payment for events.
- 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 add-on lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress website. The Seating Chart add-on lets you manage the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to each seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration addon gives 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 cart. With the Multiple 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.
- EE4 Events Table View Template Add on: The Events Table Template add on gives you 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 enables web developers to design custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- JSON API Add-on: The new Event Espresso JSON API add-on lets other applications, web tools, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso content through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software, including new addons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
User Feedback
Here are some of the many testimonials that satisfied users have written about Event Espresso:
“It is a very, very slick plugin. It’s one of those plugins where you install it, change a couple of settings, and boom you’re selling tickets.” Brad Williams, WebDevStudios
”Probably the best event management plugin available.” Materia Inspiration Centre
”Event Espresso plugin still rocks. Saw you guys were up for the WP Honors too. Glad I paid for it! If you need event management on your WordPress site I recommend Event Espresso.” Patrick Allmond, Focus Consulting
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, trainer, festival planner, or event management professional, there are simply countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, go through the user forum for useful ideas and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration process or improve the experience of your attendees.
Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress coding guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent end-user support, as so many of its plugin 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
The plugin provides exceptional support that includes access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, email support and even a monthly VIP member pass that gives 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 solid track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can depend on to run your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in a number of editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin features, however, you will want to consider using one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – 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. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This allows you to set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This enables you to run Event Espresso on 5 domains. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin is being retailed for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Registration System For WordPress
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding 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 online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a particular situation, or to report problems and share feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands of WP users.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you intend to run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), enrolling attendees, and booking seating, then you will probably not find a better plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Management System
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