Does your organization currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating bookings or registrations, such as workshops, training courses, charity fund-raisers, networking events, or even a large-scale event like a music festival, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend or participate?
Managing event registrations is a complex process. You will probably need to co-ordinate scheduling, available dates and spaces, participant numbers, data collection, payment processing and invoicing, confirmations and reservations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and issuing tickets to event participants.
There are a number of benefits to setting up a web-based event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and lower expenses, help you easily duplicate recurring events, give you more control, improve client experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you own a WordPress-based website or blog, you can easily set up a very inexpensive and professional online event registration system.
Announcing …
Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Manager Software
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration plugin for WordPress allows you to easily set up your event and begin accepting online registrations in just minutes.
(Set up multiple events and accept online registrations with Event Espresso)
Event Espresso is a versatile and feature-packed application that gives you complete control of the event registration management process.
Create custom registration forms
You can employ multiple event registration strategies, from simple online registration and straight up selling tickets, to setting up custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your event attendees, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
View detailed information about your event attendees
Important: Currently, Event Espresso supports two different versions of their plugin: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new EE 4 is considerably different than the older Event Espresso 3, as it has been rebuilt using a different structure to allow for future growth and expansion. The EE 4 plugin platform has different features, user interface, data structure, coding method and pricing. The developers aim to eventually retire Event Espresso 3, so keep this in mind as you read more about the benefits and features of using this plugin.
For more details, visit the plugin site here:
Benefits
Here are just some of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your website:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your existing web site into a fully-featured and automated event management site … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to seating capacity limits, multiple price options and discount codes, to printable tickets and seating charts.
Better Business Productivity
By using a web-based event registration solution like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by literally eliminating the chore of processing registrations manually.
Essentially, you are enabling event attendees to register on their own.
Letting your customers to do all of the data entry frees you up from doing administration and lets you spend more of your time on creating a memorable event.
More Control Over The User Experience
As you will soon discover, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management process that you want your attendees 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 3rd-party service. The cost is kept to a minimum through a model where users start with the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase add-ons only when you need additional features.
- Higher Sales: With Event Espresso you can accept online event sign-ups outside normal business hours. In addition, Event Espresso social and marketing features (see below) let people who are interested in registering for your event invite friends who may be interested in attending.
- Green Event Registration Process: With Event Espresso, the event booking process can be conducted wholly in digital form, significantly reducing typical paper waste from tasks associated with administration.
- All Data Belongs To You. You own all the information acquired from event attendees.
Plugin Features
The Event Espresso plugin provides functionality to end-users via built-in features (these are included with the plugin) and additional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso provides many built-in to WordPress users. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and configure. Be up and running in minutes.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to set up multiple ticket types and set prices, limits on ticket quantities, and more.
- Customized Notification Emails. Set up automated registration and payment notification emails to communicate with event attendees.
- Collect Payments. Event Espresso integrates with payment gateways, allowing you to collect money prior to running the events.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically duplicate the primary attendee’s registration information for any added participants.
- Default Prices. Set up events quickly and easily with pre-configured system-default ticket pricing.
- Mobile Ticketing Apps. The Event Espresso mobile registration system allows you to validate tickets, speed up in-venue registrations, create multiple check-in “stations” and track event attendees.
- Manual Registration Option. you have the option of booking event attendees at the door, or sending in paper registration forms for manual processing later.
- Event Manager Pre-approval. Control who can and cannot attend your events.
- Private Contact Commenting. Record comments about event participants on their profile. Private notes allows you to keep a record of when event registrants contacted you, your internal comments, and how you have assisted them.
- Draft Events. Draft events allow you to build your event page in your own timeframe without displaying it live on your website. You can work on your event pages until you are ready to publish it to your website, or schedule to publish your event at a later date and time.
- Easy Event Management. Event Espresso puts event managers in complete control of all aspects of your event’s registration and ticketing, and also allows you to automate the process with event management tools that include staff and venue manager, custom event designs, payment processing, list waiting, attendee limits, print-ready ticketing and more.
- Default Tickets. If you find yourself creating similar tickets for most of your events, you can set one of those tickets as your default ticket for your new events simply by checking a box.
- Multiple Event Attendee. Event Espresso 4 allows an individual or an organization to buy multiple tickets and different ticket types simultaneously. Event managers specify how many people can register in a single session by specifying either limits on ticket purchases per order, or per-ticket minimums and maximums.
- One-Click Updates. Event Espresso provides easy one-click plugin installation updates to make sure that you have the newest features and to keep your installation up-to-date with the latest version of WordPress.
- Staff Member Manager. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying profile information such as staff member’s contact information, resume and photo using a shortcode in your event description.
- Event Posts. Publish your events using pages or posts and take advantage of WordPress custom post types. You can even customize the templates to display event information in your own unique way.
Additional features include:
- Hooks, Actions & Filters. These features allow developers to implement safer and more reliable customizations and extensions to the Event Espresso software that are compatible with WordPress.
- Metabox Management And Organization. Event Espresso leverages the WP user interface, which brings the ability to reorganize the user interface to suit your workflow. Each control box can be collapsed, re-arranged or removed from the workflow configuration.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And 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 mission, the company operates on a modular that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium version of Event Espresso also provides you with over 40 added features, including:
- Email shortcodes for including customer data in confirmation emails and email newsletters.
- Question groups that simplify the process of reusing the same group of questions for similar events.
- Option to skip the confirmation page in registration.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
As well as an incredible number of features, Event Espresso provides “add ons”, which allow customers to further enhance the functionality of events.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add-on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display the scheduled events by location. Four maps are currently available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Add-on: The Recurring Events manager add on allows you to put your events on autopilot by scheduling repeated events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can create as many classes, meetings, courses and conferences in the future as you want. 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 allows your users to browse for events that take place in 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 addon is included free with any of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- Custom Files Add-on: The Custom Files add on lets you override certain aspects of the plugin.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add on Editions: This addon lets you involve your staff in the event management process and give new users permission to create events or regional managers the capacity to manage events. The Roles and Permissions Basic add-on allows you to manage & customize the WordPress users roles and give them different permissions with different privileges, allowing others 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 sections of your WP dashboard and/or certain sections 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.
- EE4 Event Ticketing Addon: The Ticketing add on gives you the ability to generate tickets with bar codes. The Bar Scanning add-on 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 mobile app can be used for checking in or checking out registrants and to validate tickets.
- Events Table View Template Add-on: The Events Table Template addon gives you a simple and easy-to-use system that allows you to modify 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 web developers to build their own custom templates using one of the templates provided as a source template.
- EE4 Infusionsoft Integration Add-on: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and business marketing software addon, you can completely automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track registrations, and accept payments from your website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to its software, including new add-ons.
For full details about the newest Event Espreso features and add ons, visit the plugin website here:
Testimonials
Here are some of the many great testimonials that customers have posted about Event Espresso:
”I can’t even imagine what I would want the plugin to do that it doesn’t already do. I’m really happy with the features.” Jim Harmer
”This really is a hell of a plugin. For me, it’s probably the final nail in the coffin for Joomla, as WP can now pretty much do EVERYTHING Joomla does, but better. Love the simplicity of this plugin!” Sam, Web Contempo
“Love the plugin, we only use it once a year for a race we have in February. This saved us tons of time in data entry. In addition, we had more runners register than any other year. We attribute that to the ease of registering online. Thanks for your work.” Ed, Friends of Oscar Scherer Park
Plugin Tips
Whether you are an education services provider, teacher, seminar planner, or event professional, there are just unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After purchasing your copy of the plugin and becoming a licensed user, search the support forum for inspiration and practical suggestions to improve your event management and registration workflow and improve the experience of your event participants.
Product Support
Event Espresso works with with most WP plugins and themes that follow WordPress coding standards. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides highly responsive support, as many of its customers confirm:
”It’s magical. Support is amazing, plugin is simple to use, a 3 year old could use the iPhone app…it all is very impressive and professional.” David, House of Prayer
Event Espresso provides incredible support that includes access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledge base and how tos, one-on-one 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 a well-staffed team of experienced WordPress web developers with a solid track record of support, so this is definitely software you can rely on to organize and manage your events.
Event Espresso Price
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 options, however, you should consider using one of the premium plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This enables you to install Event Espresso on one domain only. It includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $69.95.
- Everything Edition – This option allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Cost includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add-ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Price = $279.95.
- Developer License – This license option lets you configure Event Espresso on five domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Pricing for the Event Espresso plugin depends on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. Currently, the plugin is selling for the prices shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current price: Event Espresso – Event Manager And Ticketing Registration System For WordPress
Please Note: The above reflects the pricing at the time this review was written. This may or may not be the actual price charged by the plugin author when you visit the site.
Event Espresso – Additional Information
The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin. Make sure to stay subscribed to their customer update list to receive the latest information and updates.
Use the software’s documentation tools for answers to common questions about setup and using Event Espresso, and the support forums for questions related to a particular use-case, or to notify developers about issues and share feedback.
For detailed documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
Our Recommendation
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing management software, used and trusted by thousands of WP users.
If you are a WordPress user and you currently run events that require scheduling dates and venues, booking attendees, or booking tickets or seating, then you will probably not find a better solution for your needs than Event Espresso.
For more information, visit the plugin website here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Registration & Ticket Management Software
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