Do you currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating registrations, such as seminars, group courses, not-for-profit fundraisers, corporate events, or even a large-scale event such as a food fair, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event bookings can be a complex and time-consuming process. You will probably need to co-ordinate event schedules, event dates, registration numbers, data collection and admin, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders and notifications, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to event registrants.
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 reproduce similar events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered website or blog, you can download and install a very inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – Event Management And Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily set up multiple events and start processing online registrations in just a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and receive online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed application that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can employ several event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with an autoresponder system for ongoing follow-ups.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as it has been redeveloped using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and advantages of using this plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website or blog into an automated and feature-rich event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually doing away with 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 entry frees up your time and lets you invest more of your time on organizing a more unique event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you complete control over the event management and registration process that you want your attendees 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 other options or using a 3rd-party service. This is made possible by using a model where users start with the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and buy add-ons only if you need new functionality.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept new registrations 24/7. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing and marketing add ons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite friends who may be interested.
- Green & Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign-up process remains wholly online, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with admin and record-storage.
- Own Your Information. You own all the information obtained from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to end-users through standard features (these are included with the software) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of great features to WordPress users. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and use. Ready to start accepting registrations in no time.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In EE 4, events can have many dates and times (datetimes), that these can be managed from one single event.
- Customizable Event Designs. Match your website’s look and feel for your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s unlimited template options and elements, as well as HTML and CSS.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to prospective attendees and let them choose the ticket(s) that best suits their needs.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary registrant’s information for any added participants.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the risk of spamming and bot software programs making false registrations on your website with reCAPTCHA option to provide human authentication.
- In-App Documentation. Event Espresso 4 comes with three built-in in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event attendees at the door, or sending in paper registration forms for manual inputting later.
- No Ticket Events. Create events without making it necessary for registrants to select tickets. Event Espresso can be used for all kinds of events, not just when tickets are needed.
- Public Commenting. Add social interactivity to your events by allowing potential prospects to interact with you online via commenting and previous customers to post reviews that can help others decide whether or not to enroll. Moderation settings for public commenting are configured via the WP commenting admin area.
- Keyword Rich Page URLs. Keyword-rich Web links leverage your WordPress site’s Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” web links with topic-relevant keywords add to the context of your pages and improves your search rankings, helping you drive more visitors to your site.
- Country-specific Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings to be used throughout Event Espresso, such as currency name, currency signs, decimal characters and places, country codes, regions, and so on.
- Exportable Information. You can export all of your data collected from event attendees into Excel or CSV format for compiling reports, devising marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, and so on.
- Event Venue Manager. The venue management feature in EE 4 allows details about a venue to appear throughout the Event Espresso admin and the public areas of your site to inform registrants of your event’s location. The venue profile has many standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes details such as venue capacity, venue site URL, venue phone number, physical, Google map, etc. You can also display all of your event venues on various parts in your WordPress theme and on a venue listing page on your site where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have booked for a particular venue.
- One-Click Updates. Event Espresso offers simple 1-click plugin updates to ensure that you have the newest features and to keep your plugin installation up-to-date with the latest version of WordPress.
- Staff Member Management. Save time and keep your information organized by reusing team member profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in an event description.
- Attendee Reports. Event reporting gives you data of all the registrations and transactions, enabling you to analyze the performance of your events with the aggregate number of registrations and amount of revenue has been collected.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows developers to have more control and options over your content and how your information displays to 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 suit your workflow. Each meta 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 goals, the company operates on a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with 40+ added features, including:
- Duplicating events – simplifies the work of re-entering event data when adding new events.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service fee to each ticket).
- Default payment status.
Add-Ons
In addition to an incredible array of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow you to further expand the functionality of events.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display all upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes the events with many datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template shows categories in a simple list. Clicking the category name shows all events related to that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Add on: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add on comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon lets you take full advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event pricing when 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 data into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event booking form. Users can also look up event history and make payment for future events.
- Seating Chart Add-on: The seating chart add-on 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 addon lets you promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add on lets you manage the environment for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach a single price to every seat.
- Multiple Event Registration Add on: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives your potential attendees the ability to register for multiple events at once. In each event listing registrants will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their 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.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add on: The Events Table Template add-on 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 lets developers build their own custom templates using one of the templates provided as a source template.
- JSON API Add-on: The new Event Espresso JSON API add on lets other applications, web sites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso data through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add-ons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Here are a few of the testimonials that plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”I can’t even imagine what I would want the plugin to do that it doesn’t already do. I’m really happy with the features.” Jim Harmer
”Customizing an Event Registration plugin for WordPress by @EventEspresso. Love the pro version. Highly Recommended!” Joshua Garity
”I played around with the free version for a couple hours then purchased the Pro for a client. Love it and so do they! Sweetest Event plugin I have tried.” Bill Chambers, Bill Chambers Design
Useful Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, festival promoter, or event professional, there are just countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered owner, go through the forums for new ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management and registration process or enhance the experience of your attendees.
Event Espresso Support
Event Espresso works with with all WordPress plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you do need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great technical support, as many of its satisfied plugin users confirm:
”It’s magical. Support is amazing, plugin is simple to use, a 3 year old could use the iPhone app…it all is very impressive and professional.” David, House of Prayer
Event Espresso provides exceptional support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to manage your events.
Product License Cost
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you will want to consider purchasing one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This edition enables you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License Edition – This license enables you to set up Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Info
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the plugin’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to notify developers about issues and give feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands of businesses.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you intend to run events that require managing dates and venues, registering attendees, and reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management
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