Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings, such as seminars, group classes, not-for-profit fund-raisers, social conferences, or even a big event like a regional festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Co-ordinating event bookings is a complex process. You will probably have to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and spaces, attendee numbers, data entry, payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event participants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily duplicate previous events, give event managers more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event registration system can be quite expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-based website or blog, you can download and install an inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.
Announcing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software enables you to easily create your event and begin receiving online registrations literally in a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-rich plugin that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Note: At the time of writing this article, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as the software is being rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth. The EE 4 plugin software 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 read more about the benefits and advantages of using this plugin.
Learn more about the plugin here:
Benefits
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current online presence into an automated and feature-rich event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple pricing options and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Better 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.
Essentially, you are making it easier for attendees to enrol on their own.
Letting your participants to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you direct more energy on creating a more enjoyable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and registration process that you want your users to experience.
Some additional benefits of the plugin include the following:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso is a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to developing your own solution or using a 3rd party service provider. This is made possible through a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and buy addons when you need extra features.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event registrations any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features and add ons (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite other people they know who may be interested in attending.
- Green & Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event booking process remains entirely online, eliminating traditional paper waste from tasks related to administration.
- Own Your Information. You own all the information you collect from your event attendees.
Features
The Event Espresso plugin delivers functionality to end-users through built-in features (these come with the software) and optional features that users can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of features to WP users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and simple to install and configure. Ready to start accepting registrations in very little time.
- Customized Event Registration Form. With Event Espresso you can gather specific data using a custom event registration form on your website to plan a tailored experience for your event participants.
- Customized Notification Emails. Set up automatic booking and payment confirmation emails to communicate with your clients.
- Ticket Selector. Present several ticket options to registrants so they can purchase the ticket(s) that will best fit their needs.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary attendee’s registration information for any added participants.
- Spam Protection. Eliminate the likelihood of spamming and bot software programs making bogus registrations on your web site with reCAPTCHA tools that provide human validation.
- Discount And Promotional Codes. Offer promotional and discount codes to incentivize prospects to register without hesitation, or simply make your offers more appealing for others. Also useful for helping to increase sales of events close to timelines.
- Event Check-In List. Generate a list of event attendees and check-in everyone who attends.
- Waiting Lists. Prospective attendees can join a waiting list if your event is full. Additionally, you can make it a requirement wait-listed members pre-pay if you plan to expand numbers for your event.
- XML RSS Feeds. Automatically update blog visitors, bring in more visitors and widen your content reach with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events enable you to build an event in your own time-frame without displaying it live on your website. You can work on your event pages until you are ready to take things live, or schedule to publish your event page at a future date and time.
- 15+ Languages. Event Espresso can be set up in over 15 languages, with more translations planned.
- Exportable Data. You can export all the information gathered from your event attendees into Excel or CSV format for creating reports, planning marketing strategies, analyzing attendee statistics, and so on.
- WP Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WordPress WYSIWYG editor, so you can quickly and easily add images and format your event descriptions without knowing HTML or CSS, just like any other WordPress post.
- Attendee Profiles. You can manage your customer’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their records organized.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential attendees who have not fully paid for their enrollment with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click of a button. Your invoices will address registered attendees who have not paid their registration in full by name, give them the balance they owe, and include a link to the event details, a payment link and a url to download the invoice.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can also customize the page templates to display events in your own custom way.
Extra features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow you to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso application that are completely compatible with WordPress.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. EE 4 allows you to create a log file with debugging data that can be helpful for developers who are potential application errors.
- Autonomy, Flexibility And Value For Money: According to the mission statement on their web site, 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 mission, 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 version of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:
- Duplicating events – limits the need to re-enter event details when adding new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service tax to all tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Add ons
As well as a comprehensive range of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow customers to significantly enhance the functionality of events.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Addon: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display all upcoming events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down Custom Template Addon: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize events with multiple datetimes into a dropdown list.
- Events Date Range Template Add-on: The Date Range custom event list template lets your users to browse for events that occur within a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon is included free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon allows you to take advantage of the WP user system. With the WP User Integration add-on you can give 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 website can have access to these special events. Members can also input personal data into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event booking form. Your users can also view past events and pay for events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic & Pro Add on Editions: This add-on lets you include other users 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 WordPress users roles and allow them different permissions with different capabilities, so your staff can help you manage your events or events that other people create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain areas of your WP dashboard and/or certain sections 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 add on.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing addon gives you the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on adds the capacity to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple barcode types are included for handling check-in scans at the 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.
- EE4 Events Table Template Add-on: The Events Table Template add on provides event managers with an easy-to-use system that allows you to change the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also enables web developers to build their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a source template.
- JSON API Add-on: The Event Espresso JSON API add-on allows other software applications, websites, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso content through an Application Programming Interface (API).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its plugin, including new addons.
To learn more about the latest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website:
Testimonials
Here are some of the many testimonials that plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”My hope with this whole integration is to be able to show other school districts an affordable and easy solution to these registrations. I cannot believe how much money they are charged for less by other companies. This has the potential to save schools tens of thousands, which is huge right now.” Kelly, College Station Independent School District
”…it really does blow everything else that’s out there out of the water.” Chris Reynolds, Arcane Palette Creative Design
”Loving the functions and support from Event Espresso. One of the best plugins I’ve ever bought!” Nathan
Useful Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, trainer, festival promoter, or event management consultant, there are simply endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, search the user forum for tips and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow and improve the experience of your event attendees.
Support
Event Espresso works with with other WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress coding rules. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides excellent support, as so many of its satisfied end-users confirm:
”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 robust support including access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, custom development 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 web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to organize and manage your events.
Event Espresso Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software options, however, you need to consider purchasing one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This allows you to set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This option allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This lets you run Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. When we last checked, the plugin is selling for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin seller when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Info
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the software. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s online documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your specific situation, or to report issues and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product website.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event registration and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands.
If you own a WordPress-powered website and you plan to run any event that involves managing dates, times and venues (offline and online), registering attendees, or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Manager
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