Do you currently run or plan to run events that need handling registrations, such as seminars, community classes, not-for-profit fundraisers, social conferences, or even a big event such as an arts & crafts, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a time-consuming process. You will probably need to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and spaces, registration numbers, data entry, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to 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 reproduce similar events, give event managers more control, improve customer experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event booking system can be expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based site, you can download and install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event booking system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management And Registration System
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WP allows you to easily create an event and start accepting online bookings literally in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and take online bookings)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Create custom event registration forms
You can use a range of event registration strategies, from simple online enrolments and straight up selling tickets, to setting up 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
Important: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: EE 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is impressively different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the platform has been revamped using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually transition completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of using the plugin.
Learn more here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing digital presence into a fully-featured and automated 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.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations and sign-ups manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating event attendees to enrol themselves.
Letting your attendees to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you concentrate more of your energy on planning a more unique event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon see, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and registration process that you want your customers to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Reduced Costs: Event Espresso is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to building your own software or using a third party service provider. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where you purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase addons only when you need added functionality.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new bookings any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social features and add-ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with other people they know who may be interested.
- Green Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process remains wholly in digital form, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-keeping.
- Own Your Data. You own all the information acquired from your event participants.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its customers through built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that users can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of great features to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and use. Be up and running in very little time.
- Multiple Times and Dates Per Event. In EE 4, events can have multiple dates and times (datetimes), that these can be managed from one single event.
- Customized Confirmation Email Message. Easily set up automatic booking and payment notification email messages to communicate with your participants.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with payment gateways, enabling you to collect money before running events.
- Custom Post Types. Integrate Event Espresso into your WordPress theme and display events data throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow you to create new prices that adjust the base ticket pricing of the system-default ticket.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to validate tickets, speed up door registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track participants.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of registering event participants when they show up, or send in paper-based registration forms for manual registration later.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Be selective about who can and cannot register for your events.
- Public Commenting. Add social a new level of social sharing to your event by allowing potential customers to ask questions about your event and previous participants to post reviews that can help others consider whether or not to register. Moderation settings for commenting are set up using the WP built-in commenting section.
- Works With The Most Recent Version Of WP. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create beautifully-designed event pages that are responsive and mobile-friendly.
- Multi-Language Software. Event Espresso can be run in 15+ languages, with more translations coming soon.
- Exportable Data. You can export all the data gathered from your event attendees into Excel or CSV format for compiling reports, devising marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- Venue Profiles. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 allows information about a venue to be published throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your website to inform attendees of your event’s location. The venue profile displays many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also displays venue information like venue seating capacity, venue site URL, phone number, venue location details, map, etc. You can also list all of your event venues on specific parts in your theme and on a venue archive page on your website where you can set up and publish venue profiles for multiple events or display every event you have booked for a particular venue.
- Automatic Plugin Installation Updates. Event Espresso provides simple 1-click plugin upgrades to make sure that you have the latest features and to keep your plugin installation up-to-date with the latest version of WordPress.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event customers who have not paid in full for their registration with a standard but personalized invoice with one click of a button. Your invoices will reference registered customers who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the amount owing, and include links to the event details, a payment url and a link to download the invoice.
- Categorize Events. If you have several different 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 help event registrants to find what they’re searching for. You can display all events in a category on a custom event category page, make the events searchable by category, and color-code events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, in addition to suggesting new events in the categories that interest your visitors.
Additional features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for most WordPress users, and also extremely robust and customizable for enterprise-level users and developers. The bottom line is that by using OOP, EE 4 permits more complex extensions and customizations to the software.
- Metabox Management And Reorganization. Event Espresso lets you leverage the WordPress user interface, which brings the ability to reorder the user interface to match your workflow processes. Each meta box can be collapsed, re-arranged or completely deleted from your page.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value For Money: According to the mission statement on their website, Event Espresso’s goal 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 model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also provides you with over 40 added features, including:
- Live-filtering when you search for events inside the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that make it easy to reuse commonly asked questions for similar events.
- Default payment status.
Add ons
As well as a comprehensive range of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow end-users to further expand the capabilities of managing your event.
Some of these addons include:
- EE4 Events Grid Template Add-on: Displays events in a pure CSS grid-like structure using the featured image. Hovering over the image will display further information. If the event does not have a featured image, a default image will be used instead.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Custom Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize the events with multiple datetimes into a drop-down list.
- Events Category Accordion Template Add-on: The Category Accordion template shows the categories as a simple list. Clicking a category name displays all events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- Events Social Sharing Add on: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that lets your attendees to share a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- 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 prices and overriding event prices when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered website users can have access to your special events. Members can also add personal data into their profile page allowing them to quickly register for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Your users can also view event history and pay for events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add-on Editions: This addon lets you include staff in the event management process and give new users the ability to create events or regional managers permission to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and allow them different permissions with different privileges, so your staff can help you manage your events or events that others create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain parts of your WordPress dashboard and/or certain areas of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to create geographic regions for other people to manage events, use the Roles and Permissions Pro addon.
- Multiple Event Registration Add-on: The Multiple Event registration addon gives your potential customers the ability to register for 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 shopping 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 Add-on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and categories of events via an attractive graphical calendar.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft integration all-in-one sales and marketing software addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track registrations, and accept payments from your website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add ons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, check out the plugin here:
User Feedback
Below are a few of the testimonials that satisfied plugin users have posted 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
”…it really does blow everything else that’s out there out of the water.” Chris Reynolds, Arcane Palette Creative Design
”I’m using it on multiple sites and enjoying it. It’s simple and as others have stated… fast service and real help.” Arlen Nagata
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, trainer, show planner, or event consultant, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, visit the support forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to streamline your event management workflow and improve the experience of your event participants.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WP plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress coding rules. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive technical support, as many of its plugin users attest:
”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
The Event Espresso software provides great support that includes access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, one-on-one 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 an established team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to run and manage your events.
Product Licensing Price
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin options, however, you need to consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This license option lets you install Event Espresso on 1 site only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This lets you install Event Espresso on one site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This allows you to install Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the software is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the latest pricing: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the software. 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 setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your particular use-case, or to notify developers about issues and give 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 leading WP event booking and ticketing management plugin, used and trusted by thousands of WordPress website owners.
If you own a WordPress website and you intend to run events that require managing dates and venues (offline and online), registering participants, and reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a better WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Management & Ticketing Registration Software
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