Do you currently run or plan to run events that require registrations, such as workshops, group classes, not-for-profit fund raisers, marketing conferences, or even a large-scale event like a show, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to book to attend?
Managing event bookings is a time-consuming process. You will probably need to manage scheduling, date availability, registration numbers, data collection and admin, payments and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to event attendees.
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 costs, help you easily replicate previously-run events, give event managers more control, create a better client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be expensive.
Fortunately, if you run a WordPress-powered site, you can download and install a very inexpensive and highly professional web-based event registration system.
Introducing …
Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Manager
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin enables you to easily set up your event and start processing online bookings in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and accept online registrations)
Event Espresso is a feature-packed application that gives you complete control over the event registration management process.
Customize registration forms
You can employ a number of event registration strategies, from simple online bookings and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your attendees, or integrating your event bookings with social media and email marketing software.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso is transitioning between two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is completely different than the older EE 3, as the software has been revamped using a different structure to accommodate future expansion. The Event Espresso 4 plugin software has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The company plans to eventually retire EE 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
For more details go here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the many benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Automated Event Registration Management
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing website into an automated and feature-rich event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating limits, multiple price options 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 increase your business productivity by practically eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are facilitating event attendees to enroll themselves.
Allowing your clients to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing admin work and lets you focus more of your energy on creating a memorable event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will see in a moment, Event Espresso gives you full control over the event management process that you want your participants to experience.
Additional benefits include:
- Less Costs: The Event Espresso plugin is a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a third party provider. This is made possible by using a model where Event Espresso users buy the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and then purchase optional addons only when you need added features.
- Higher Sales: Event Espresso lets you accept online event signups any time of day or night. Not only that, but, Event Espresso social add ons (see below) let people interested in attending your event invite others who may be interested in attending.
- Green Event Booking Process: With Event Espresso, your event signup process is completed entirely in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper consumption from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the information you acquire from event attendees.
Event Espresso Features
Event Espresso provides functionality to users through built-in features (these come with the software) and optional features that customers can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many features to site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Fast and easy to install and implement. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Dates and Times Per Event. In Event Espresso 4, events can have multiple dates and times (called datetimes), that these can be managed from one single event.
- Customizable Event & Registration Page Designs. Create a custom look for your events and signup page using Event Espresso’s limitless template options and elements, plus HTML and CSS.
- Tax Admin & Reporting. Event Espresso 4 gives you a number of options to manage taxes for your event and report tax fees to customers who purchase tickets. Event managers can administer taxes globally and on a per-ticket basis.
- Google Maps. Google Maps integration allows you to configure the display of Google Maps on your event listing and event details sections.
- Default Price Types. Price types let event managers create new prices that adjust the base ticket price for your system-default ticket.
- Mobile Registration & Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system lets you authenticate tickets, speed up door registrations, create various check-in “stations” and track event attendees.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event attendees at the door, or send in paper registration forms for manual inputting later.
- Ticketless Events. Set up events without the requirement for registrants to get tickets. Event Espresso can be used for any form of event, not just those that require tickets.
- Private Contact Comments. Record notes about a contact on their profile and how you’ve helped them. Private commenting allows you to keep records of when users contacted you, your internal notes, and how you have assisted your customers.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events enable you to build your event page over multiple work sessions without displaying it live on your website. You can work on your events until you are ready to publish it on your website, or schedule to publish your event page at a future time and date.
- Country-specific Settings. Event managers can configure the country and currency settings that will be used in your events, including currency name, currency symbols, decimal characters and places, country codes, regions, etc.
- Default Tickets. If you create similar tickets for your events, you can set up as your default ticket for your new events simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Visual Editor. Event Espresso uses the native WP Visual editor, allowing you to quickly and easily insert graphic images and format your content without knowledge of HTML or CSS, just like any other WordPress post or page.
- Registrant Records. Manage each customer’s profiles and payment history and keep all of their data organized and easily accessible.
- Invoice Payment Reminders. Follow-up potential event registrants who have not paid in full for their registration with a standard but personalized PDF invoice with just one click. Your invoices will address pre-registered customers who have not paid their registration in full by name, give them the amount owing, and include a link to the event, a payment url and a url to download the invoice.
- Accurate Event Attendee Manager. You control your attendees’ details; who has registered, for what event and how much they’ve 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 attendee list to a CSV file for additional reports, send customizable payment reminders and receipts and communicate with your customers individually or collectively.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions And Filters. These features allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are 100% compatible with the WordPress software platform.
- Maintenance Mode. Pause registrations for normal website traffic when you need to carry out maintenance on your website. You can still work on the back-end of your site during maintenance mode.
- Flexibility, Autonomy & 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 model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also comes with over 40 additional features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including customer data in notification emails and newsletters.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service fee to tickets).
- Category titles and descriptions on event listings.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to a comprehensive array of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow end-users to significantly expand the functionality of events.
Some of these add ons include:
- 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, a default image will be used.
- Recurring Events Management Add-on: The Recurring Events manager add-on allows you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years ahead. You can create as many future events as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close bookings for all recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template enables your users to browse for events that occur within a certain date range.
- 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.
- WP User Integration: The WP User Integration add-on lets you take advantage of the WordPress user system. With the WP User Integration addon you can give your 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 enter personal information into their profile page allowing them fast registration for events by auto-filling in their personal information on the event registration form. Users can also look up event history and make payment for new events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Addon Versions: This add on lets you include other users in the event management process and give new users permission 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 assign them different permissions with different privileges, allowing staff to help you manage your events or the events that others create. You can customize roles so that a user does not have access to certain areas of your WP dashboard and/or certain areas of your Event Espresso settings. If you’d like to allow users to have geographic responsibilities for events and users, use the Roles and Permissions Pro add-on.
- Multi-Event Registration Add-on: The Multi-Event registration add-on gives potential customers the ability to register for 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 shopping cart. With the Multi-Event Registration addon, attendees can register for several events at once and even add additional attendees to any of the same events in the same checkout process.
- EE4 Events Calendar Add-on: This addon uses the WP calendar to display events and categories of events using a nice graphical calendar.
- JSON API Add-on: The Event Espresso JSON API add on permits other applications, web sites, mobile applications, etc… to access your Event Espresso details through an API (Application Programming Interface).
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new addons.
To learn more about the newest Event Espreso features and add-ons, check out the plugin here:
Customer Feedback
Below are just some of the many testimonials that customers have posted about Event Espresso:
”Broadcasting my support for Event Espresso will be a pleasure. I recently helped the Webmaster at a sister church configure your event manager for their site, so I can say with confidence and from experience, that Event Espresso is the best Event Manager plugin ever!” Philip Simpson, The Charlotte Church
”Your plugin rocks! Seriously, saved me hours on the phone setting up attendance manually. Kudos. :)” William, Petruzzo Photography
”Event Espresso plugin still rocks. Saw you guys were up for the WP Honors too. Glad I paid for it! If you need event management on your WordPress site I recommend Event Espresso.” Patrick Allmond, Focus Consulting
Useful Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, presenter, seminar planner, or event management professional, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can do with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a registered user, visit the user forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management workflow and improve the experience of your event attendees.
Product Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and WP themes that follow WP coding standards. If you have problems with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive customer support, as many of its plugin end-users attest:
”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
The software provides amazing support including access to support forums, comprehensive online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, priority 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 an established team of experienced web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can count on to run and manage your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of editions, including a FREE basic edition (referred to as Event Espresso Decaf). For personal support and advanced plugin features, however, you will want to consider downloading one of the ”Pro” plugin editions below:
- Personal License – This enables you to configure Event Espresso on 1 site only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything License Edition – This lets you set up Event Espresso on one domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium addons and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer Licensing – This option enables you to set up Event Espresso on 5 sites. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Price = $249.95.
The price of the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the software retails for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Espresso
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Plugin Information
Event Espresso regularly adds new features and improvements to its software. Make sure to remain subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Search the software’s documentation pages to find answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to your specific use-case, or to report bugs and share feedback.
For all installation and support documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso website.
The Bottom Line
Event Espresso is the preferred WordPress event booking and ticketing manager software, used and trusted by thousands of users.
If you own a WordPress-powered web site and you plan to run events that require scheduling dates and venues (offline and online), booking participants, and reserving tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better WP plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more details, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – Event Management & Ticketing Registration Software For WordPress
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