Do you currently run or plan to run events that need to accept bookings, such as workshops, community courses, not-for-profit fundraisers, marketing events, or even a large-scale event like a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event bookings is a complex process. You will probably need to manage event schedules, dates, attendee numbers, data administration, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event registrants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily copy settings for previously-run events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based website or blog, you can install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Presenting …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration And Ticket Management Plugin
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin allows you to easily schedule your event and start receiving bookings in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed software that gives you complete control of your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media and email marketing software.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is significantly different than the older EE 3, as it has been redeveloped using a different structure to enable future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of using this plugin.
More info:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current web site into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to maximum seating limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually eliminating the need to process registrations and sign-ups manually.
Basically, you are facilitating event participants to enroll by themselves.
Allowing your clients to do the data themselves frees you up from doing admin work and lets you concentrate more time on creating a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and registration process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to developing your own software or using a third-party service provider. The cost is kept to a minimum by using a model where users pay for the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then purchase optional add-ons when you need additional functionality.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online event sign-ups 24 hours a day. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people interested in registering for your event invite others who may be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process remains entirely online, reducing typical paper waste from tasks associated with enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information you obtain from your event participants.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to end-users through standard features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that you can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of features to web site owners. Here are just some of these:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Be up and running in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to set up multiple ticket types and set different prices, number of tickets, etc.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. Create the look and feel you want for your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and elements, plus HTML and/or CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with payment gateways, enabling you to collect booking payments prior to running the events.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your theme and reuse events data throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Create events fast by pre-configuring system-default ticket prices.
- Mobile Registration And Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of registering event participants at the door, or send in paper-based registration forms for manual processing later.
- Admin Pre-approval. Control who can participate in your events.
- Private Contact Commenting. Keep notes about event attendees on their profile. Private commenting helps you keep a record of when users contacted you, your internal observations, and how you have assisted your contacts.
- Keyword-Rich URLs. Keyword-rich event page URLs take advantage of your WP Permalinks configuration settings. Search engine friendly urls that use relevant keywords add to the context of your events and is favored by search engines, helping you drive more traffic to your events.
- Your Organization Settings. you can configure your organization’s profile to be deployed throughout the plugin and your front-end templates. The organization fields include: company name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, primary contact email address, telephone, VAT/tax number, business logo, Facebook URL, Twitter profile URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for most of your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for any new events simply by checking a box.
- Register Multiple Attendees. Event Espresso 4 allows one person or an organization to pay for multiple tickets and different ticket types simultaneously. Event managers decide how many attendees are able to enroll in one registration by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Registrant Records. You can manage each attendee’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their records organized and easily within reach.
- Staff Member Manager. Save time and keep your information organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in your event description.
- Accurate Event Attendee Manager. You have control of your attendees’ details; who has enrolled, which event they have registered for and what amount they have paid. With the attendee manager, you can get a quick overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an attendee list to a CSV file for additional reports, send custom payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your registrants individually or collectively.
Extra features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This allows web-based software developers to have more control and options over the content of your events and how the information displays to your readers.
- Control Box Management And Organization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which gives you the ability to organize the user interface to suit your workflow process. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from your page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: 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 objectives, 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 edition of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 additional features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events in the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow you to significantly enhance the functionality of managing your event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template organizes multiple datetime events into a drop-down list.
- 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 be customized to display the event thumbnail 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 advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give your users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event pricing when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site can have access to these special events. Members can also store personal information into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Users can also look up event history and pay for future events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Addon Editions: This addon lets you include other users in your organization to help manage your events 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 WordPress users roles and assign them different permissions with different capabilities, so your staff can help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain sections of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain areas of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to control factors geographically for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add on.
- Multiple Event Registration Add on: 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 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 Calendar Addon: This add-on uses the WordPress calendar to display events and event categories via a nice graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp add on lets you automatically register attendees to a chosen mailing autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
For more information about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:
Users – Feedback
Below are just some of the many great testimonials that satisfied users have posted about Event Espresso:
”Congratulations on an absolutely fantastic plugin. I’m really impressed with its functionality and add on features and will definitely upgrade my client’s production site to the premium version (when ready for launch) to incorporate all the features. As I have told another client “this plugin is the cat’s meow”.” Pete Mansel
”Your plugin rocks! Seriously, saved me hours on the phone setting up attendance manually. Kudos. :)” William, Petruzzo Photography
”Thank you, we just did 2 sell out seminars of 50 attendees in 48 hours using Event Espresso and it was awesome. My wife was able to pick up on the processing backend with ease. You have done a great job on getting this system together – very simple, clear and well laid out With powerful functionality. I am so glad I dumped the old booking application we had and gave Event Espresso a go. Just wanted to say thanks, and thanks for the very patient, friendly and speedy assistance in helping me to get it all set up at the start. Many thanks to you and your team. A grateful customer.” Nicholas de Castella, Emotional Intelligence Trainings
Useful Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, workshop planner, or event consultant, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered owner, visit the support forum for useful ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management process or enhance the experience of your event customers.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WP plugins and themes that follow standard WP coding rules. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great user support, as so many of its satisfied plugin customers confirm:
”These guys are right on any problem or issue or even general questions. You can’t really put a value high enough on the kind of support these guys offer.” Mark Wigston, Muskoka Graphics
Event Espresso provides incredible support that includes 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 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 WordPress web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can depend on to run your events.
Product Licensing Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software features, however, you need to consider using one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This edition lets you configure Event Espresso on one site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This lets you run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This license option enables you to set up Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one 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 sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Look up the software’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to report problems and leave feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of businesses.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run an event that requires managing dates, times and venues, enrolling participants, and selling seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management
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