Does your business currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings, such as seminars, group courses, not-for-profit fund-raisers, marketing functions, or even a big event such as a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups can be a time-consuming process. You will probably need to co-ordinate calendar schedules, date availability, attendee numbers, data collection, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to event attendees.
There are many advantages to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily duplicate recurring events, give event managers more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event booking system can be quite costly.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based website, you can easily install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event registration solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration Plugin For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily schedule multiple events and begin receiving bookings in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and process online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you complete control over your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ several event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it is being redeveloped using a different structure to enable future growth. The EE 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The developers aim to eventually transition completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of using this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Plugin 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 site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically doing away with the need to process registrations and sign-ups manually.
Basically, you are facilitating participants to perform the registration on their own.
Letting your customers to do the data themselves frees you up from doing administration and lets you spend more of your attention on organizing a better event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon learn, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and registration process that you want your attendees to experience.
Some additional benefits and advantages include:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party provider. This is made possible by using a model where you start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase addons only if you need new functionality.
- More Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online bookings 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social sharing addons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event share your information with their friends who may also be interested in attending.
- Green Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process remains entirely in digital form, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the data obtained from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso software delivers functionality to its users through built-in features (these come with the software) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many features to WP users. Here are just some of these:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Ready to use in no time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to set up as many kinds of tickets as you want and specify different pricing options, number of tickets, and more.
- Custom Notification Emails. Configure automated booking and payment confirmation email messages to communicate with event attendees.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with payment gateways, enabling you to collect booking fees before running events.
- Custom Post Types. You can Event Espresso into your WordPress theme and display contact data throughout other areas of your site.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly and easily by pre-configuring system-default ticket pricing.
- Discount & Promotional Codes. Offer promotion and discount codes to incentivize visitors to register now, or simply make your events more affordable for others. This is also practical for helping to sell-out events close to timelines.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. Event Espresso 4 lets you 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 has reached the maximum number of registrants. You can also make it a requirement wait-list members pay for their spots if you plan to add more capacity for the event.
- XML RSS Feeds. Keep your customers updated about your events, drive quality traffic and reach a wider number of potential customers with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Keyword-Rich Page URLs. Keyword rich URLs leverage your Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” urls with relevant keywords enhance the context of your pages and improves your search rankings, helping you drive more visitors to your site.
- Your Organization Settings. Configure your organization’s profile to be deployed throughout the software and your front-end templates. Organization information include: organization name, street address, city, state, country, zip/postal code, email address, phone, VAT/tax number, business logo, Facebook URL, Twitter URL, LinkedIn profile URL, Pinterest URL, Google+ profile URL, Instagram URL.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating identical tickets for many of your events, you can set up as your default ticket for your new events simply by checking a box.
- Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WordPress WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily insert graphic images and format your content without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any other WordPress post.
- Registrant Records. You can manage each attendee’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their information organized.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event registrants who have not fully paid for their registration with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with one click. Your invoices will reference pre-registered customers who have not paid their registration in full by name, display the balance they owe, and include a link to the event details, a payment link and a url to download the invoice.
- Categorize Events. If you have a number of event types like free and paid, conference speakers and mastermind sessions, different kinds of courses, etc. you can categorize these to make it easier for event attendees to find what they’re searching for. You can display all the events in a category on an event category page, make events searchable by category, and colour-code your events on the Event Espresso events calendar to make these easier to find, as well as suggesting other events in the categories that interest your visitors.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso plugin that are completely compatible with WordPress.
- Full Logging, Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 lets you output a log file with debugging data which can be helpful for web developers who are potential application errors.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value For Money: 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 objectives, the company operates on a modular and efficient model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:
- Duplicating events – limits the work of re-entering event details when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service fee to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As mentioned earlier, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow customers to significantly expand the capabilities of managing your event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you 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 add on enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can add as many events in the future as you like. Event Espresso will then automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- 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 also be customized to show an event thumbnail 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.
- Custom Template Add on: The Custom Template add on is capable of displaying your events in a number of exciting and interesting ways.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Addon Editions: This add on lets you involve staff in your organization to help manage your events and give new users the capacity 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 capabilities, allowing staff to help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that users do not have access to certain areas of your WP dashboard and/or certain parts 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.
- Multi-Event Registration Add on: The Multi-Event registration addon gives 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.
- Events Calendar Add on: This WordPress events calendar displays events and event categories in a nice graphical calendar.
- JSON API Addon: The Event Espresso JSON API add on gives permission for other software applications, web sites, mobile apps, etc… to access your Event Espresso information through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
For full details about the latest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website here:
User Testimonials
Here are some of the testimonials that users have posted about Event Espresso:
”EventEspresso saves us money, saves our secretary 16-24 hours and looks so professionally done that people ask us how we do it; which we happily tell them, “Event Espresso, and be sure to get the ticketing add-on.”” David, House of Prayer
”When you can get a company to expend more money switching systems just to use your plugin…you’ve really accomplished something.” David, House of Prayer
”Loving the functions and support from Event Espresso. One of the best plugins I’ve ever bought!” Nathan
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, presenter, conference promoter, or event management consultant, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing the plugin and becoming a registered user, search the user forum for tips and practical ways to improve your event management process or improve the experience of your event participants.
Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WP plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great technical support, as so many of its users confirm:
”Thank you Seth for being so responsive and going above and beyond the call of duty with your app! I highly recommend Event Espresso for its functionality and for the stellar support. Seth has a deep knowledge and understanding of WordPress and has built a tool that is seamless to use for both organizer and attendee alike! After looking at a bunch of alternatives, Event Espresso far surpasses the other apps that are available.” Wendy Troupe, ICS North Pole Express
Event Espresso provides robust support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, email 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 a plugin you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Event Espresso Cost
Event Espresso is available in different editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software features, however, you should consider using one of the ”Pro” plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This license option allows you to configure Event Espresso on one site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything License – This edition lets you install Event Espresso on one site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This lets you set up Event Espresso on five sites. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing details of the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the software is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to register for their newsletter when you visit their site 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 specific situation, or to report errors and give feedback.
For detailed installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event registration and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of people.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you intend to run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering attendees, and/or reserving tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a more suitable plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticket Registration Software For WordPress
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