Does your company currently run or plan to run events that need handling bookings or registrations, such as workshops, community classes, not-for-profit fund-raisers, corporate functions, or even a large-scale event like a rave party, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Managing event bookings can be a complicated and time-consuming process. You need to manage scheduling, date availability, attendee numbers, data collection and admin, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special requests and issuing tickets to event registrants.
There are many advantages to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can make your business more efficient, save time and lower expenses, help you easily copy settings for repeat events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and grow your sales.
The problem is that setting this up can be very expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-based site, you can easily install a very inexpensive and professional web-based event registration solution.
Introducing …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily schedule multiple events and start receiving online bookings in minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online event registrations)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-packed plugin that gives you full control of the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can use 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 participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: Currently, Event Espresso offers two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and EE 4. The new EE 4 is fundamentally different than the older EE 3, as the plugin has been redeveloped using a different structure to enable future expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Hands-Free Event Registration Management And Ticketing System
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website or blog into a fully-featured and automated event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using an online event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by virtually eliminating the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Basically, you are making it easier for attendees to perform the registration process by themselves.
Allowing your clients to do all of the data entry frees up your time and lets you spend more attention on delivering a more enjoyable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will learn shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your users to experience.
Additional benefits and advantages include the following:
- Lower Costs: The Event Espresso plugin provides you with 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 users buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase addons when you need new features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online signups 24 hours a day. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social sharing features (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite others who may be interested in attending.
- Green And Paperless Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, your event registration process remains entirely online, significantly reducing traditional paper consumption from tasks related to administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the data obtained from your event participants.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso software provides functionality to end-users through built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides a number of great features to web site owners. Here are just a few:
- Quick and easy to install and implement. Ready to start accepting registrations in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to set up as many kinds of tickets as you need and specify different prices, limits on ticket quantities, and more.
- Customizable Event Designs. Create the look and feel you want for your events and registrations page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and components, and HTML and/or CSS.
- Tax Admin & Reporting Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you several options to manage taxes for your event and report tax fees to customers when purchasing tickets. Event managers can administer taxes globally or on a per-ticket basis.
- Smart Single Page Checkout. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary attendee’s registration details for any added attendees.
- Spam Protection. Prevent the risk of spammers and bot software programs creating bogus registrations by using reCAPTCHA settings to provide human validation.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track attendees.
- Contact Profiles & Contact List. EE 4 provides you with the tools to understand who your customers are and how you’ve done business with your customers. The Contact Profile page stores the name, biography, contact information, event registration data, private comments, etc. about each customer.
- Waiting Lists. Latecomers can subscribe to a waiting list if your event has reached the limit of registrants. Additionally, you can specify that wait-list registrants pay for their spots if you plan to expand capacity for the event.
- RSS Event Feeds. Keep your blog visitors updated about your events, drive quality traffic and expand your content reach with the built-in XML RSS events feed.
- Optimized For The Most Up-To-Date WordPress Version. The Event Espresso 4 user interface follows all WordPress guidelines to help you create beautiful event pages that are easier to use and mobile-friendly.
- Multi-Language Application. Event Espresso is is available in more than 15 languages, with more translations planned.
- Exportable Data. You can export all of your data collected from your event customers into Excel or CSV format for creating advanced reports, implementing new marketing strategies, reviewing attendee statistics, etc..
- Register Multiple Event Attendees. EE 4 allows an individual or an organization to register multiple attendees at once. You specify how many attendees are able to register in one session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- Attendee Records. You can manage your attendee’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their data organized.
- Staff Management. Save time and keep your information organized by reusing staff member profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in an event description.
- Accurate Event Participant Management. You control your attendees’ information; who has registered, which event they have registered for and how much they paid. With the attendee manager, you can get an overview of registered attendees and their payment status, easily add/edit attendee records and payments, export an event attendee list to a spreadsheet for additional uses, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your registrants on a person-by-person basis or collectively.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And 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. Event Espresso 4 allows you to output a log file with debugging data that can be helpful for developers when potential problems.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: 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 that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes 40+ added features, including:
- Live-filtering when searching for events in the Event Espresso admin.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same group of questions for similar events.
- Category titles and descriptions on event listing pages.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an amazing number of features, Event Espresso provides “add-ons”, which allow users to further expand the functionality of your event management system.
Some of these addons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display upcoming events by location. There are four maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Drop-down 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 also be customized to display the event thumbnail image instead of a date.
- Social Coupons Integration Add on: If your website uses Groupon.com you can easily accept Groupon codes to your events. You can even specify whether events accept the social coupons or not.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration addon lets you take advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give users a special incentive by offering member prices and overriding event prices when your members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered website users can have access to these special events. Members can also store personal information into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in the personal information on the event registration form. Your users can also view event history and make payment for future events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Addon Editions: This add-on lets you involve other users in the event management process and give new users the capacity to create events or regional managers the capacity to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WP users roles and give them different permissions with different privileges, 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 sections of your WP dashboard and/or certain areas 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.
- Event Ticketing & Bar Scanning Add on: The Ticketing add on adds the capacity to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning addon adds 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 venue door. Customers can either print out their tickets or display them on their mobile devices. The barcode scanner can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- EE4 Events Table Template Addon: The Events Table Template add on gives event managers an easy-to-use system that lets you edit the design of your event lists. It comes with a simple table template with category filters, table search, table paging and more. It also lets developers design their own custom templates using one of the included templates as a base template.
- MailChimp Integration: The MailChimp addon allows you to automatically register participants to a specified mailing list or group within MailChimp.
Note: Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its plugin, including new add ons.
For more details about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, check out the plugin here:
Testimonials
Below are a few of the many testimonials that satisfied plugin users have posted about Event Espresso:
”I want to commend you on a fabulous product which is just the right price for a small non-profit. People are happy with the registration process, as are we! …Thank you SO much for a great product.” Sandra Forero Bush, World Trade Center Tacoma
”I have been using Event Espresso to run my festival and have been very happy with how it has worked out. They have provided tremendous support and their iPhone app is amazing and easy to use. I suggest using it for your event.” Alex Grant, Byron Spirit Festival
”At first we looked at CVENT for one of our clients and they wanted $16,000 per year for 3000 event attendees + fees totaling $22k. That is before Staff and Webinar fees. Worst of all we had to prepay the $16k amount even if we never used all 3000 attendees. That was when we looked at Event Espresso and we realized we could build our own event system for less than 16K. For the most part we have been very satisfied with our decision. The real ROI will come next year when they don’t have to pay another 16k-22K! Over the next 5-6 years we should be able to claim that we saved the company over $100,000 – Thanks Event Espresso!” David Waterman (Long Version), KT Benefits & InkItDigital.com
Useful Tips
Whether you are a motivational speaker, teacher, seminar promoter, or event consultant, there are just endless possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed owner, spend a little time visiting the user forum for useful ideas and practical ways to streamline your event management and registration workflow or enhance the experience of your event participants.
Plugin Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with all WP plugins and themes that follow WP coding standards. If you do need support with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great customer support, as so many of its plugin clients attest:
”No complaints here. Satisfied customer. You can teach us all few things about customer service. Thanks!” Charles
The Event Espresso plugin provides robust support including access to a support forum, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase 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 WordPress web developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a plugin you can depend on to run and manage your events.
Product Pricing
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (named Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced software functionality, however, you may want to consider purchasing one of the premium plugin versions below:
- Personal License – This license option allows you to set up Event Espresso on 1 site only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Pricing includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This option allows you to configure Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (addons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The cost of purchasing the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time special offers. Presently, the plugin is being retailed for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticket Management
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may not be the actual price charged by the plugin seller when you visit the website.
Additional Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the plugin’s documentation tools to find answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums if you have questions related to your specific situation, or to report issues and share feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the preferred WP event booking and ticketing management software, used by thousands of WordPress site owners.
If you are a WordPress user and you intend to run an event that involves managing dates and venues, booking attendees, or reserving tickets, then you will probably not find a more suitable WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticketing Manager System
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