Does your business currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating registrations, such as workshops, group courses, non-profit fund-raisers, networking events, or even a large-scale event like a music festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups is a complex process. You will probably need to manage calendar schedules, availability, registration numbers, data processing, collecting payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to participants.
There are lots of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily reproduce repeat events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event booking system can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based site, you can install a very inexpensive and highly professional online event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Ticketing Registration System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP enables you to easily create your event and start receiving registrations in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online event registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-rich application that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can use several event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms in order to better understand your attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is significantly different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been redeveloped using a different structure to allow for future growth. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and features of using the plugin.
Learn more here:
Plugin Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current digital presence into an automated and feature-rich event management site … 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 a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by literally doing away with the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are making it easier for attendees to enrol themselves.
Letting your participants to do all of the data themselves frees up your time and lets you spend more of your energy on planning a more enjoyable event.
Full Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your attendees to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include the following:
- Reduced 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 provider. This is made possible by using a model where you purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy add-ons only when you need new functionality.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online event bookings 24 hours a day. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing features (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite other people they know who may also be interested in attending.
- Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event signup process is completed wholly in digital form, eliminating traditional paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information you collect from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its users via built-in features (these are included with the software) and additional features that you can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many unique features to site owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and simple to install and set up. Ready to start accepting registrations in no time.
- Custom Event Registration. With Event Espresso you can collect unique data using a custom event registration form on your site to prepare a tailored experience for your event participants.
- Event Calendar. Customers can easily find your events and add these to their schedule with the WordPress calendar.
- Tax Admin & Reporting. Event Espresso 4 gives you a number of options to manage taxes for your event and provide reports of tax fee components to registrants who purchase tickets. You can administer taxes globally or on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to customize the settings of Google Maps on the event listing and event details pages.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly and easily by pre-configuring system-default ticket prices.
- Promotional Codes. Offer promotion and discount codes to encourage people to register without hesitation, or simply make your offers more affordable for price-sensitive prospects. Also useful for helping to sell out events close to deadlines.
- Contact Profiles And Contact List. EE 4 provides you with the tools to understand who your customers are and how they’ve done business with you.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can subscribe to a waiting list if your event is completely sold out. Additionally, you can make it a requirement waiting list registrants pay for their spots if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- Public Commenting. Add “social proof” by allowing potential prospects to ask questions about your event and past attendees to post reviews that can help others choose whether or not to sign up. Moderation settings for public commenting are specified using the WP commenting system.
- SEO Friendly URLs. Keyword-rich event page Web links take advantage of your WP site’s Permalinks configuration settings. SEO-friendly web links that include relevant keywords add to the context of your content and improves your search rankings, helping you drive a more targeted audience to your site.
- Full Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in complete control of every aspect of an event’s registration and ticketing, and also lets you automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, custom event page designs, payment processing, list waiting, limits on attendees, printable tickets and more.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for your events, you can automatically set one of those tickets as your default ticket for the next time you create an event simply by checking a box.
- Register Multiple Event Attendees. Event Espresso 4 allows a single person or people to enroll multiple participants simultaneously. Event managers decide how many people can register in a single registration session by specifying either a limit on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Automatic Updating. Event Espresso provides easy one-click updates to ensure that you have the latest features and to keep your plugin installation up-to-date with the latest version of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and website visitors can tell others about your events using social media sharing buttons.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post type features such as custom fields, post meta data, taxonomies, etc. You can also customize your page templates to display events in your own unique way.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are compatible with WordPress.
- Maintenance Mode. You can pause registration capabilities for regular website traffic when you need to make updates on your website. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- 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 software has been built using a model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes 40+ added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing a group of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Add-Ons
As well as a comprehensive number of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow plugin users to further expand the capabilities of managing an event.
Some of these addons include:
- EE4 Events Grid Template Addon: Displays events in a pure CSS grid-like structure using the featured image. Hovering over the image will display further information. If an event does not have a featured image available, a default image will be used instead.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Add on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize 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 image instead of a date.
- 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 all 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 your users a special incentive by offering member pricing 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 store personal data into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event booking form. Users can also look up past events and make payment for events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add-on Versions: This add on lets you involve others in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the ability to create events or regional managers the capacity 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, allowing staff to help you manage your events or the events that others create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain areas of your WP 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.
- EE4 Event Ticketing Addon: The Ticketing add-on adds the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the ability to scan ticket bar codes. 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. Registrants 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.
- Events Calendar Addon: This add-on uses the WP calendar to display events and event categories in an attractive graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add-on: The Event Espresso JSON API add on lets other software applications, websites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso information through an API (Application Programming Interface).
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 here:
Customer Feedback
Here are just some of the many 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
”This really is a hell of a plugin. For me, it’s probably the final nail in the coffin for Joomla, as WP can now pretty much do EVERYTHING Joomla does, but better. Love the simplicity of this plugin!” Sam, Web Contempo
”Event Espresso is very nice and functional plugin. Set it up is not very easy for a beginner like me, but you have one of the best support team in your side. They answer all questions in a timely manor. I didn’t know anything about setting up the plugins, Thanks to Event Espresso Support team that now I can find my way around this plugin. Event Espresso helps our company to manage the workshops, keep track of our students, manage the emails, and much more. We upgrade from personal License to Business license in just two weeks of using Personal license. I strongly recommend the Business license.” Ted Karlsalr, Omnilargess
Plugin Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, event planner, or event consultant, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, go through the support forum for tips and practical ways to improve your event management and registration workflow and improve the experience of your participants.
Product Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WP development guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive technical support, as many of its end-users attest:
”Your plugin saved our client nearly $9000 in development costs because it handled the majority of the functionality we were looking for at a much lower cost. EventEspresso’s staff have been very responsive to our needs when we have them (which has been rare, because the plugin is so well coded). Great job on a great plugin!” Brandon P., Experience Farm
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support with access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, premium 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to run and manage your events.
Event Espresso 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 need to consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This option allows you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This license option lets you run Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This lets you run Event Espresso on 5 sites. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost to purchase 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 amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The pricing above was current when this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds 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.
Search the plugin’s online documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to a specific situation, or to notify developers about errors and leave feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product information pages.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WP event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands of companies.
If you own a WordPress web site and you plan to run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues, enrolling attendees, and/or booking tickets, then you will probably not find a better WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Management Software
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