Do you currently run or plan to run events that require co-ordinating registrations, such as seminars, group courses, not-for-profit fundraisers, marketing conferences, or even a large-scale event such as a concert, a sporting or religious event, or any kind of event where people need to register to attend?
Co-ordinating event sign-ups is a complex process. You may need to co-ordinate event schedules, availability, registration numbers, data collection, collecting payments and sending invoices, confirmations, reminders, refunds and cancellations … perhaps even accommodating special needs and delivering tickets to attendees.
There are lots of benefits to setting up an automated online event registration system. It can streamline your business processes, save time and reduce expenses, help you easily reproduce previous events, give event managers more control, improve user experience and increase your sales.
The problem is that this can be quite expensive.
The good news is that if you run a WordPress-powered web site, you can easily install a very inexpensive and highly professional web-based event booking solution.
Presenting …
Event Espresso
Plugin Description
The Event Espresso online event registration software allows you to easily create multiple events and begin accepting registrations in just a few minutes.
(Event Espresso lets you set up multiple events and receive online event bookings)
Event Espresso is a flexible and feature-rich plugin that gives you full control over your event registration management process.
Event Espresso lets you customize registration forms
You can employ a range of event registration strategies, from simple online sign-ups and straight up ticket sales, to creating custom registration forms for collecting detailed information about your participants, or integrating your event registration forms with social media sites like Facebook.
Access detailed information about event attendees
Please Note: At the time of writing this review, Event Espresso provides two different versions of their software: Event Espresso 3 and Event Espresso 4. The new Event Espresso 4 is considerably different than the older EE 3, as the platform is being 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 company plans to eventually migrate completely to Event Espresso 4, so keep this in mind as you read more about this plugin.
Go here to learn more about the plugin:
Benefits Of Using Event Espresso
Here are just a few of the benefits and advantages of using Event Espresso to manage event registrations on your web site:
Automated Event Registration Management And Ticketing Solution
Event Espresso provides you with everything you need to turn your current website into a feature-rich and professional event management website … from custom registration forms and automated response emails, to attendee limits, multiple price levels and discount codes, to printable tickets and even seating charts.
Higher Business Productivity
By using an online event registration system like Event Espresso, you save time and improve your business productivity by practically doing away with the chore of processing registrations and bookings manually.
Essentially, you are enabling attendees to enrol on their own.
Letting your attendees to do the data entry frees up your time and lets you concentrate more of your resources on organizing a more unique event.
Complete Control Over The User Experience
As you will see shortly, Event Espresso gives you more control over the event management and booking process that you want your clients to experience.
Some additional benefits include:
- Lower Costs: Event Espresso gives you a very inexpensive online event registration management solution compared to other options or using a 3rd-party provider. This is made possible by using a model where you pay for the core plugin (which suits the requirements of most users) and purchase optional addons when you need additional features.
- Increased Sales: Event Espresso allows you to accept new registrations any time of day or night. In addition, Event Espresso social addons (see below) let people who are interested in attending your event invite others who may be interested.
- Paperless Event Sign Up Process: With Event Espresso, your event sign up process can remain wholly online, significantly reducing typical paper waste from tasks related to enrollment.
- All Information Belongs To You. You own all the information obtained from your event attendees.
Plugin Features
Event Espresso delivers functionality to its customers through built-in features (these are included with the software) and optional features that you can purchase, called add-ons.
Event Espresso offers many built-in to site owners. Here are just a few of these:
- Quick and easy to install and set up. Ready to start using in very little time.
- Multiple Ticket And Pricing Options. Event Espresso allows you to configure as many types of tickets as you need and specify prices, ticket quantity limits, and more.
- Customized Confirmation Email Message. Easily set up custom automatic registration and payment notification emails to communicate with your clients.
- Tax Admin And Reporting Options. Event Espresso 4 gives you several ways to manage taxes for your event and provide reports of tax fees to registrants when purchasing tickets. Event managers can administer taxes globally and on a ticket-by-ticket basis.
- Intelligent Single Page Checkout Process. The Event Espresso 4 checkout process is smart, fast and intuitive. Registrants are given the option to automatically copy the primary registrant’s details for any additional participants.
- Default Prices. Create events quickly with pre-configured default prices.
- In-App Documentation Systems. Event Espresso 4 includes three detailed in-app documentation systems: Help Tours, Help Tabs and Tool Tips.
- Manual Registration. you have the option of booking event participants at the door, or send in paper-based forms for manual processing later.
- Waiting Lists. Interested persons can join a waiting list if your event has become sold out. You can also make it a requirement waiting list registrants pay for their spots if you plan to add more capacity for your event.
- Private Contact Commenting. Record comments about users on their profile and how you’ve assisted them. Private notes lets you keep records of when event participants contacted you, your internal comments, and how you have interacted with your contacts.
- Draft (status) Events. Draft events let you develop an event at your own leisure without publishing it to your website. You can work on your events until you are ready to take things live, or schedule to publish your event page at a later time and date.
- Full Control Of Your Event Management. Event Espresso puts you in complete control of all aspects of your event’s registration and ticketing, and allows you to automate this process with event management tools that include staff and venue management, custom event designs, payment processing and handling, list waiting, attendee limits, print-ready ticketing and more.
- Default Tickets. If you create similar tickets for your events, you can set up as your default ticket for the next event simply by ticking a checkbox.
- Event Venue Profiles. The venue manager in Event Espresso 4 allows details about a venue to display throughout the Event Espresso admin and the front end of your website to inform registrants of the location of your event. The venue record has many of the standard WP settings such as tags, categories, discussion settings, comments, etc., but also includes details such as venue seating capacity, venue website, phone number, physical, directions map, etc. You can also list all of your venues throughout different parts in your WordPress theme and on a venue listing page on your site where you can set up and display venue profiles for multiple events or display all the events for a given venue.
- Attendee Profiles. You can manage each registrant’s profile information and payment history and keep all of their records organized and easily accessible.
- Staff Management. Save time and stay organized by reusing staff profiles for multiple events or displaying their profile using a shortcode in your event description.
- Attendee Reporting. Quick-view event reporting provides you with information of all of your registrations and transactions, enabling you to track the performance of your events with the aggregate number of people who have registered and amount of revenue you have collected.
Extra features include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). Event Espresso is simple enough for most WordPress users, and also extremely robust and customizable for higher end users and developers. The bottom line is that by using Object-oriented programming (OOP), Event Espresso 4 facilitates more complex developments and customizations to the application.
- Full Logging & Remote Logging. Event Espresso 4 allows you to create a log file with debugging data that can be useful for web developers who are troubleshooting.
- Flexibility, Autonomy And Value: According to the philosophy stated on their web site, Event Espresso’s aim 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 model that provides users with great autonomy and flexibility and delivers value for money as a result.
The premium edition of Event Espresso also includes over 40 added features, including:
- Duplicating events – limits the work of re-entering event data when creating new events.
- Default surcharge (similar to adding a service fee to tickets).
- Default payment status.
Event Espresso Add-Ons
In addition to an amazing number of features, Event Espresso provides “addons”, which allow you to significantly expand the functionality of managing an event.
Some of these add-ons include:
- Events Vector Maps Template Add on: The Vector Maps custom events list template lets you display upcoming events by location. There are 4 maps available: USA, UK, Canada and Australia.
- Recurring Events Manager Addon: The Recurring Events management addon enables you to put events on autopilot by scheduling recurring events weeks or months … even years in advance. You can create as many events in the future as you need. Event Espresso will automatically open and close registrations for all recurring events.
- Events Date Range Template Add on: The Date Range custom event list template allows your users to search for events that occur within a certain date range.
- Social Media Buttons Addon: The social media addon displays Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons in your events. The Social Media addon is included free with all of the Event Espresso support licenses.
- 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 your users a special incentive by offering member pricing and overriding event prices when members are logged in. You can even set up member-only events where only registered users of the site will have access to these special events. Members can also enter personal data 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 look up event history and pay for new events.
- Roles And Permissions Basic And Pro Add-on Versions: This add-on lets you include others 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 capabilities, so your staff can help you manage your events or the events that others create. You can customize roles so that users do 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 Addon: The Multiple Event registration add-on gives your potential customers the ability to book multiple events at once. In each event listing registrants will be given the option to either register for a single event or add multiple events to their cart. With the Multiple Event Registration add-on, attendees can register for several events at once and even add additional attendees to any of the same events in the same checkout process.
- Events Table Template Add on: The Events Table Template add on gives event managers a simple and easy-to-use system that lets you change 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 enables web developers to design their own custom templates using one of the templates provided as a base template.
- Infusionsoft Integration Addon: With the Event Espresso 4 Infusionsoft App and Merchant Account integration all-in-one sales and business marketing plugin addon, you can easily automate your customer relations and email marketing campaigns to seamlessly capture event attendee data, track bookings, and accept payments from your website.
Note: The Event Espresso development team is continually adding new features and improvements to the plugin, including new add-ons.
For more information about the newest Event Espreso features and addons, visit the plugin website here:
Customer Feedback
Here are some of the many testimonials that 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
”Event Espresso event management plugin for WordPress is really an awesome plugin.” Cheryl Smithem, Charleston PR & Design
”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
Event Espresso Tips
Whether you are a gym owner, teacher, event planner, or event management professional, there are simply unlimited possibilities of what you can achieve with the Event Espresso plugin.
After downloading the plugin and becoming a registered user, visit the user forum for useful ideas and practical ways to improve your event management process and enhance the experience of your customers.
Product Support
Event Espresso is fully compatible with most WordPress plugins and themes that follow standard WordPress coding guidelines. If you experience issues with the plugin, however, you will find that Event Espresso provides great user support, as so many of its satisfied end-users confirm:
”By far, the customer service experience with Event Espresso has been the best of any WordPress Theme or Paid Plugin that I’ve used in the past two years!” Megan Murray, Boys & Girls Club of Lake Tahoe
Event Espresso provides comprehensive support including access to support forums, in-depth online documentation with faqs, knowledgebase and how tos, email 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 developers with a proven track record of support, so this is definitely a solution you can depend on to organize and manage your events.
Software Cost
Event Espresso is available in a range of plugin editions, including a FREE basic edition (called Event Espresso Decaf). For support and advanced software features, however, you should consider purchasing one of the paid plugin editions below:
- Personal Licensing – This lets you set up Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add-ons sold separately) and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $69.95.
- Everything Licensing – This allows you to install Event Espresso on 1 domain only. Includes 51+ Premium features, 29 Premium add ons and 1 year of upgrades and support. Cost = $279.95.
- Developer Edition – This allows you to run Event Espresso on 5 domains. Includes 51+ Premium features, (add ons sold separately) and one year of upgrades and support. Cost = $249.95.
Current pricing for the Event Espresso plugin can vary, depending on whether there are any promotions or limited-time specials being offered. When we last checked, the plugin is selling for the pricing shown above. Check the plugin’s website for the current pricing details: Event Espresso – Event Registration And Ticketing Management
Please Note: The pricing above was current at the time this article was written. This may or may not be the actual pricing charged by the plugin developer when you visit the website.
Event Espresso – 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.
Look up the plugin’s documentation pages for answers to common questions about setup and how to use Event Espresso, and visit the support forums for questions related to a particular situation, or to notify developers about issues and leave feedback.
For all documentation, demos, downloads, videos, tutorials, FAQ and more, visit the Event Espresso web site.
We Recommend
Event Espresso is the leading WordPress event registration and ticketing manager plugin, used by thousands.
If you own a WordPress web site and you plan to run any event that involves scheduling dates and venues, booking attendees, and booking seating, then you will probably not find a better WordPress plugin for your needs than Event Espresso.
For complete details, check out the plugin here: Event Espresso – WordPress Event Manager & Registration System
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