Do you currently run or plan to run events that need co-ordinating registrations, such as seminars, training courses, not-for-profit fund raisers, social conferences, or even a big event like an exhibition, 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 complicated and time-consuming process. You will most likely have to co-ordinate scheduling, dates, registration numbers, data administration, payments and sending invoices, confirmations and reservations, reminders and alerts, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and delivering tickets to attendees.
There are a number of benefits to setting up an online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce costs, help you easily replicate recurring events, give you more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting up a web-based event registration system can be costly.
Fortunately, if you own a WordPress-based website, you can set up an inexpensive and professional web-based event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Management And Registration System For WordPress
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration WordPress software enables you to easily set up an event and begin accepting online bookings literally in a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a flexible 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 enrolments and straight up selling tickets, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Important: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their plugin: EE 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is completely different than the older Event Espresso 3, as the software is being rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually migrate completely to EE 4, so keep this in mind as you learn more about the benefits and advantages of using the plugin.
To learn more about the plugin go here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your site:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing web site into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple pricing levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and increase your business productivity by virtually doing away with the need to process registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating participants to register on their own.
Letting your clients to do the data themselves frees up your time and lets you spend more of your resources on planning a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will discover in a moment, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your customers to experience.
Some additional benefits include the following:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party service provider. The cost is kept low through a model where you buy the core plugin (which suits the needs of most users) and then buy addons only when you need added functionality.
- Increased Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online sign-ups 24 hrs a day. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing add-ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event share your information with their friends who may be interested in attending.
- Green Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, the event sign up process can remain entirely online, eliminating typical paper consumption from tasks related to admin and record-storage.
- Own Your Data. You control all the information you acquire from event participants.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to its customers via standard features (these are included with the plugin) and optional features that customers can buy for an added cost, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many great features to site owners. Here are just some:
- Fast and easy to install and set up. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to set up multiple ticket types and specify unique pricing options, maximum number of tickets, etc.
- Custom Confirmation Emails. Configure automatic registration and payment notification emails to communicate with your clients.
- Tax Admin And Reporting. Event Espresso 4 provides a number of options to manage taxes for an event and report tax fee components to registrants when purchasing tickets. You can configure taxes globally or on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- 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 registrant’s information for any additional participants.
- Default Prices. Set up events fast by pre-configuring default pricing.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system enables you to authenticate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, set up multiple check-in “stations” and track event participants.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event participants when they show up, or sending in paper registration forms for manual processing later.
- Administrative Pre-approval. Control who can and cannot participate in your events.
- Private Contact Notes. Keep comments about event participants on their profile. Private commenting helps you keep records of when users contacted you, your internal notes, and how you have interacted with your customers.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events enable you to build your event over multiple work sessions without displaying it live on your site. You can continue building your events until you are ready to take it live, or schedule to publish your event at a later date and time.
- Complete Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in full control of all aspects of an event’s registration and ticketing, and also lets you automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, custom event designs, payment processing, wait lists, limits on attendees, printable ticketing and more.
- Exportable Information. You can output all of your information collected from event attendees into Excel or CSV format for producing reports, implementing marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, and so on.
- WP Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the built-in WordPress WYSIWYG editor, allowing you to quickly and easily add photos and stylize your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any typical WP post or page.
- A Community Of Event Experts. Event Espresso gives you access to a community of experienced event managers, developers, web designers, marketers and business owners who also use the software. You can interact with other members of the Event Espresso community through their community chat room, user support forums, job board, and social media discussions on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google+.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event participants who have not paid in full for their booking with a standard but personalized invoice with just one click of a button. Your invoices will address pre-registered participants who have not paid their registration yet by name, give them the balance owing, and include links to the event, a payment link and a link to download the invoice.
- Accurate Attendee Management. You have control of your customers’ date; who has registered, which event they have registered for and what amount they’ve paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered participants and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an event attendee list to a CSV file for additional uses, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and send messages to your event registrants on a person-by-person basis or collectively.
Additional features include:
- Define Extra Meta Information. This feature allows developers to have more control and options over your content and how your information displays to your prospective customers.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registration capabilities for normal website traffic whenever you need to perform maintenance on your website. You can continue to work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Autonomy, Flexibility & Value: According to the mission statement on their site, Event Espresso’s objective 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 software has been built using a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money in the process.
The premium version of Event Espresso also includes 40+ additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes that includes participant data in emails and updates.
- Default surcharge (the same as applying a service fee to every ticket).
- Option to skip the confirmation page during registration.
Addons
In addition to an amazing range of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to further enhance the capabilities of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- EE4 Events Grid Template Addon: Displays events in a pure CSS grid-like structure using the featured image. Hovering over the image will display further information. If an event does not have a featured image available, it will use a default image.
- Recurring Events Management Add on: The Recurring Events management addon enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can schedule as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in advance as you want. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Category Accordion Template Addon: The Category Accordion template displays categories in a simple list. Clicking on a category name displays the events associated with that category and closes previously open categories.
- Social Media Buttons Add-on: The social media add-on displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media add-on is included free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Template Addon: The Custom Template add on is capable of displaying your event lists in a range of visually exciting ways.
- Seating Chart Addon: The seating chart addon is great for venues and events that sell and reserve seats for attendees in advance. This is perfect for venues and events such as theaters, concert halls, play houses, sports arenas and stadiums. The Seating Chart add on allows you to promote reserved or assigned seating to your events and venues from your WordPress site. The Seating Chart add on lets you manage the experience for your customers and design assigned seating charts and attach single pricing to every seat.
- Event Ticketing And Bar Scanning Addon: The Ticketing addon adds the capacity to create tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon gives you the ability to scan ticket bar codes. The ticketing add on includes the ability to customize event tickets. Multiple bar code types are included for managing check-in scans at the door. 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.
- Events Table View Template Add on: The Events Table Template add on provides you with a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to edit the look and feel of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also allows developers to design their own custom templates using one of the templates included as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration Addon: The MailChimp add-on lets you automatically register attendees to a specified mailing autoresponder list or group within your MailChimp account.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
For more details about the latest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Plugin Users – Testimonials
Below are just some of the testimonials that satisfied plugin users have written about Event Espresso:
“It is a very, very slick plugin. It’s one of those plugins where you install it, change a couple of settings, and boom you’re selling tickets.” Brad Williams, WebDevStudios
”Probably the best event management plugin available.” Materia Inspiration Centre
”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, presenter, show promoter, or event management professional, there are just countless possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, visit the user forum for tips and practical ways to improve your event management workflow and enhance the experience of your event attendees.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso is compatible with other WordPress plugins and WordPress themes that follow standard WordPress development rules. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great support, as many of its clients confirm:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
Event Espresso provides amazing support that includes access to a support forum, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase 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.
In addition, Event Espresso boasts a well-staffed team of experienced web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can count on to organize and manage your events.
Plugin Pricing
Event Espresso is available in various plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software options, however, you need to consider downloading one of the paid plugin versions below:
- Personal Edition – This license option allows you to set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This allows you to configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This option enables you to run Event Espresso on five sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Currently, the software retails for the amounts shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Management And Registration Software For WordPress
Note: The above reflects the pricing when this article was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Additional Information
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.
Look up the plugin’s documentation pages for answers to common questions about setting up and how to use Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a particular use-case, or to report bugs and give feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso product web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event booking and ticketing manager software, used by thousands of companies.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run an event that involves scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), booking attendees, and/or selling tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For full details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Manager Plugin
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