Do you currently run or plan to run events that need managing registrations, such as workshops, community classes, charity fund raisers, networking conferences, or even a large-scale event like a music show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event registrations can be a time-consuming process. You will probably need to manage event schedules, event dates, attendee numbers, data collection and storage, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to event attendees.
There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily duplicate recurring events, give event managers more control, improve customer experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event booking system can be very costly.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based website, you can install an inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily schedule your event and start processing bookings in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online event bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich application that gives you full control of your event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can employ several event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your participants, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about your event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software has been redeveloped using a different structure to enable future expansion. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the plugin.
Learn more about the plugin 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 And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current online presence into a feature-rich and professional event management site … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to seating limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Increased Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally eliminating the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are facilitating participants to perform the registration by themselves.
Letting your attendees to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you invest more attention on planning a memorable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional plugin benefits include:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is an inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd party provider. The cost is kept low by using a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy add-ons only when you need extra functionality.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept online signups 24 hrs a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with other people they know who may also be interested.
- Green Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign-up process remains entirely in digital form, reducing typical paper waste from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Data. You control all the data you collect from event participants.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to users through built-in features (these come with the plugin) and additional features that customers can buy for an extra cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many unique features to site owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Custom Event Registration Forms. Event Espresso lets you collect unique data using a custom event registration form on your site to prepare a unique experience for your clients.
- Event Calendar. Registrants can easily find your upcoming events and add these to their schedule with a WordPress calendar.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with payment gateways, allowing you to collect money prior to running events.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WP theme and reuse events details throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types let you create new prices that adjust the default ticket pricing of your system-default ticket.
- Discount Codes. You can leverage promotional and discount codes to encourage prospects to make a buying decision now, or simply make your offers more attractive for others. This is also practical if you want to increase sales of events close to timelines.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. EE 4 provides you with the tools to know who your customers are and how they have done business with you.
- No Ticket Events. You can promote events without the requirement for registrants to get tickets. Event Espresso can be used for all types of events, not only when tickets are required.
- Private Comments On Contacts. Keep observations about a contact on their profile. Private commenting lets you keep records of when event attendees contacted you, your internal comments, and how you’ve helped them.
- Draft Events. Draft events let you build an event page over time without displaying it live on your site. You can work on your event pages until you are ready to take it live, or schedule your event to publish at a later time and date.
- Multi-Language Software. Event Espresso can be run in 15+ languages, and more languages are being added all the time.
- Default Tickets. If you create similar tickets for many of your events, you can set up as your default ticket for your new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Event Venue Manager. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 lets details about venues to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your site to inform users of your event’s location. The venue profile has many of the standard WordPress settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes details like venue capacity, venue web address, telephone number, physical, location map, etc. You can also display venue profiles on various locations in your theme as well as on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and reuse venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have listed for a given venue.
- Automatic Software Upgrading. Event Espresso offers simple one-click software upgrades to make sure that you have the newest features and to keep your installation working with the latest version of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event participants and site visitors can tell others about your events using social sharing buttons.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of types of events such as free and paid, conference speakers and breakout sessions, different kinds of programs and program modules, etc. you can categorize them to make it easier for your attendees to find what they’re looking for. You can list all events in a category on an event category page, make all events searchable by category, and color-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make them easier to find, as well as suggesting other events in the categories that appeal to your visitors.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso plugin that are fully compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for regular website visitors when website maintenance is required. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & 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 company operates on 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 provides you with 40+ additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including attendee data in emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to every ticket).
- Option to skip the confirmation page in registration.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow customers to further expand the functionality of events.
Some of these addons 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 four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add on: The Recurring Events management addon enables you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months ahead. You can create as many events in advance as you like. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all of these recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template shows categories as a simple list. Clicking the category name displays the events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Add on: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add on comes free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Addon: The Custom Files add on provides PHP files that let you override certain aspects of the Event Espresso plugin.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart add-on is for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add on lets you promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add on lets you control the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single prices to every seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing addon gives you the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the ability to scan ticket barcodes. 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 barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table View Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add-on gives you an easy-to-use system that allows you to edit the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also lets web developers design their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration Addon: The MailChimp add on lets you automatically register attendees to a specific mailing list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Below are some of the many great testimonials that satisfied customers have posted about Event Espresso:
”I want to commend you on a fabulous product which is just the right price for a small non-profit. People are happy with the registration process, as are we! …Thank you SO much for a great product.” Sandra Forero Bush, World Trade Center Tacoma
”Your plugin rocks! Seriously, saved me hours on the phone setting up attendance manually. Kudos. :)” William, Petruzzo Photography
”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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, event planner, or event consultant, there are just countless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, spend a little time visiting the user forum for useful ideas and practical ways to improve your event management workflow and enhance the experience of your participants.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WP plugins and WP themes that follow WP coding standards. If you find that you need help with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as many of its satisfied plugin users 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 robust support including access to support forums, in-depth 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 an established team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in various editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin options, however, you need to consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal Licensing – This option lets you set up Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This edition enables you to run Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This license option enables you to install Event Espresso on five sites. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (addons 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. Presently, the plugin sells for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Registration & Ticketing Manager
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 developer when you visit the website.
Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the plugin’s online documentation tools for answers to common questions about setting up and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your particular situation, or to report bugs 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 plugin, used and trusted by thousands of event promoters.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run an event that requires managing dates and venues (offline and online), registering participants, or booking seating, then you will probably not find a better WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website: Event Espresso – Event Manager & Ticket Registration Software For WordPress
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