Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require managing registrations, such as workshops, group classes, non-profit fund raisers, networking events, or even a large-scale event such as a community festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend or participate?
Managing event registrations is a complex and time-consuming process. You may need to manage scheduling, available dates and spaces, participant numbers, data administration, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and providing tickets to participants.
There are a number of advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily duplicate similar events, give you more control, create a more enjoyable client experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up an online event booking system can be expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered website, you can set up an inexpensive and highly professional online event booking solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Manager & Registration System For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin lets you easily set up your event and start accepting online bookings in just a few minutes.
(Set up multiple events and take online bookings with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed plugin that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use a number of event registration strategies, from simple online enrollments and straight up ticket-selling, to creating custom registration forms in order to better understand your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with an autoresponder system for ongoing notifications.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Important: 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 completely different than the older EE 3, as the platform has been revamped using a different structure to accommodate future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and price. The company plans to eventually migrate completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
More info:
Plugin 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 current website or blog into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated emails, to attendee limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually doing away with the need to process registrations manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for participants to register themselves.
Letting your clients to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you focus more of your time on creating a more unique event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management and booking process that you want your users to experience.
Additional benefits include:
- Significantly Lower Costs: Event Espresso provides you with a very low cost online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third-party service. The cost is kept low by using a model where Event Espresso users purchase the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy optional add ons when you need added features.
- More Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept new event sign-ups outside normal business hours. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social features and add ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with others who may also be interested in attending.
- Green And Paperless Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event registration process can be performed wholly in digital form, reducing typical paper consumption from tasks associated with administration.
- Own Your Data. You control all the data collected from your event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to its users through standard features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that users can buy for an additional cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers a number of great features to web site owners. Here are just some:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to use in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso lets you set up multiple ticket types and specify unique pricing options, ticket quantity limits, etc.
- Customizable Event Page Designs. Create the look and feel you want for your events and bookings page using Event Espresso’s template options and parts, plus HTML and CSS.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso seamlessly integrates with payment gateways, allowing you to collect money before running events.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary registrant’s information for any additional participants.
- Default Price Types. Price types allow event managers to create new prices that adjust the default ticket price of the default ticket.
- Discount & Promotional Codes. Leverage promotional and multiple discount codes to incentivize people to make a purchasing decision now, or simply make your offers more attractive for others. This is also practical for helping to sell out events close to timelines.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event attendees at the door, or sending in paper registration forms for manual submission later.
- No Ticket Events. You can list events without the requirement for registrants to book tickets. Use Event Espresso for all kinds of events, not only those that require tickets.
- Private Comments On Contacts. Record notes about users on their profile. Private notes allows you to keep records of when users contacted you, your internal comments, and how you’ve interacted with your contacts.
- Search Engine Friendly Page URLs. Keyword-rich event page URLs leverage your WP site’s Permalinks configuration settings. “Pretty” permalinks with relevant keywords add to the context of your pages and improves your search rankings, helping you get a more targeted audience to your events.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in full control of all aspects of an event’s registration and ticketing, and also lets you automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, customizable event designs, payment processing and handling, wait lists, limits on attendees, print-ready tickets and more.
- Default Tickets. If you create similar tickets for many of your events, you can automatically set one of those tickets as your default ticket for all new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- WP Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WordPress WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add photos and stylize your content without having to know HTML or CSS, just like any standard WordPress post or page.
- Automatic Updating. Event Espresso offers simple 1-click software updating to ensure that you have the newest features and to keep your software installation working with the latest version of WordPress.
- Social Sharing. Event registrants and website visitors can help spread the word about your events using social 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 custom way.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming. Event Espresso is simple enough for most WP users, and also robust and customizable for higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), Event Espresso 4 permits more complex developments and customizations to the application.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for regular site traffic whenever you need to make changes on your website. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- 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 goals, the company operates on a modular and effective 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 additional features, including:
- Duplicating events – simplifies the need to re-enter event data when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (the same as adding a service fee to all tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as a comprehensive number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow users to further enhance the capabilities of events.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template allows you to display upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Dropdown Template Add-on: The Recurring Events Drop-down custom template lets you organize many datetime events into a drop-down list.
- Events Calendar Table Template Addon: 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 instead of a date.
- Events Social Sharing Add-on: Add social sharing features to the end of your Event Espresso “thank you” page that allows your registrants to post a message about their event registration on Twitter and Facebook after registration.
- Custom Template Add-on: The Custom Template addon lets you display your event lists in a number of exciting and interesting ways.
- Seating Chart Add on: The seating chart add on is for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is ideal for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add on lets you offer reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues directly from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart addon lets you control the environment for your attendees and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to every seat.
- EE4 Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing add on adds the ability to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing addon includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for handling check-in scans at venues. Customers 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 Calendar Addon: This addon uses the WordPress calendar to display events and event categories using an attractive graphical calendar.
- MailChimp Integration Add on: The MailChimp add-on allows you to auto-register participants to a specified mailing autoresponder list or group within MailChimp.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
For complete details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, visit the plugin website:
User Testimonials
Here are a few of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
”My clients have used Event Espresso for Transportation (Cadet Bus for leave), Parties (tailgates and brewery tours), and Horse-back riding lessons and camps. What a terrific plug-in and fantastic support from Seth!” Nina, Blue Iris Web Design
”…it really does blow everything else that’s out there out of the water.” Chris Reynolds, Arcane Palette Creative Design
”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 an education services provider, presenter, conference promoter, or event management consultant, there are just countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso software.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, search the user forum for useful ideas and practical suggestions to streamline your event management process or improve the experience of your event registrants.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WordPress plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great support, as many of its satisfied clients 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 great support with access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, custom development 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 web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Software Price
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced plugin functionality, however, you may want to consider using one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This license allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Price includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License – This license enables you to run Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on five domains. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the plugin retails for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
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 seller when you visit the site.
Additional Information
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.
Use the software’s online documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your particular situation, or to report issues and share feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands of people.
If you are a WordPress site owner and you currently run events that require scheduling dates, times and venues, booking participants, and/or reserving seating, then you will probably not find a better software for your needs than Event Espresso.
To learn more, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticket Registration Plugin For WordPress
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